


Broken, in pieces, I'll put you back together

by gabsrambles



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, I promise it gets better, canon compliant to the end of season two, gabs style, season three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2018-11-05 08:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 67,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11009283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: Post season two.Broken people often need to stay broken for a little while before they can figure out how they fit back together again. And, often, it's not the way it started.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! This is Post Season Two, so, welcome to Angst Fest 17. Which is, really, every fic I write. Be warned, this is canon compliant, so Kara loves Mon-el (I know, ew, right? But she says she does, soooo). But wait! Don't leave! He's gone. And Lena isn't. And Kara is a mess. And Lena is a bit of a mess, too. And this is a Kara/Lena fic. Promise.

The city is in pieces. It’s a smoking, smouldering mess. Lena’s chest feels like it’s the same way, rent into pieces—parts of herself torn and shredded. Anger that she fell for Rhea’s lies and her manipulative bullshit. The shiver that settled under her skin and raised goosebumps just at the idea of working with her mother. The knowledge that she really is just nowhere close to moving past those issues that sit too heavy on her shoulders. The community is in pieces. Fear and animosity swirling amongst them all to leave a taste of something bitter on her tongue.

But no one is in as many pieces as Kara Danvers must be.

And Lena has no idea how to put her back together.

After all, Lena all but created the device that sent the man she loves away.

As the city picks itself back up again, and police are back on the street, telephone lines come back on and conspiracy theories start to die down, Lena’s mother has to disappear again. She stands in Lena’s office like it’s her own, her shoulders back and hands buried in her coat pockets. Her mother has always owned the space she’s in. Lena once watched her in awe.

Now, she mostly feels disdain.

There’s a second Lena thinks about telling her to turn herself in. The words are there, like stones, weighing in her chest alongside the knowledge that she should stop her mother from leaving but never will. Any words are worthless. Lena knows that. Despite it, she’ll make herself feel better and call the authorities the second her mother is gone, but she’ll still escape.

Everything’s a jumbled mess outside, and no one will get here on time. There are countless injured, looters taking advantage. No one has time to organise the man hunt required to get Lillian Luthor.

And still Lena can’t bring herself to try harder to stop her.

Her mother cocks her head and for a second, something lurches in Lena’s stomach, something she hates, at the thought that she’s going to leave without even a word.

But then her mother darts her hand out, fingers wrapping around Lena’s forearm. It takes everything in Lena not to pull away, to not yank her arm and watch her mother’s hand fall, empty and rejected. To step back away from her and everything that makes her just so goddamn toxic. That collides with the secret everything else that longs to step closer. To step further into this semblance of affection. To see that edge of pride in her mother’s eyes that Lena craves.

Instead, Lena stands, and her mother watches her, her grip sure to leave five perfectly circular bruises behind, with no idea about the war raging in Lena’s head, the war that’s sent her heart thumping away, left her almost breathless.

You don’t show emotion. Not to Lillian Luthor.

“You should be coming with me.”

Lena says nothing. Just grits her jaw and juts her chin, just a little, and Lillian’s face, as always, gives nothing away. Lena learnt it from her, but will never perfect it—who can be utter stone like that?

Only her mother, from what Lena’s seen.

“You can’t trust the people you think you can.”

There doesn’t need to be a sneer for Lena to hear one. Lena blinks. “What?”

“You’ll learn. You’ve proved you’re brighter than I thought.”

Her mother’s head cocks, just slightly, and with a purse of her lips, her hand finally falls away and she turns and leaves.

And Lena doesn’t move until she’s sure she’s gone. Her hands are shaking, and she has no idea why. The phone is lead as she calls the police, assures them she’ll answer any of their questions.

Her hand still shakes when she hangs up. The decanter rattles against her tumbler glass as she pours a drink.

It feels like everything within her is rattling.

On the balcony, the cool air soothing her burning cheeks, she barely notices the smoke that swirls upwards and into the sky. There are still sirens; the city is still falling to pieces.

And still Lena tries to bite down the tremble in her hand.

The one on her lips.

She’s on her second glass, the sky painted with dark blue and streaks of light fading fast in the distance when she fumbles with her phone. The alcohol’s made everything doable again; the world is blurry, but somehow sharper. Like she’s numb enough to see clearly.

She taps out a message to Kara. Then deletes it all. Then types it once more.

She deletes it again.

Then takes a final hit of her drink, all back in one, letting it slide into her stomach. She can almost feel it swimming in her blood stream, relaxing her muscles.

It thunks down on the rail and she stares at her phone.

The trembling has stopped.

She types out a message.

It’s short, in the end. Everything she wants to say deleted and doesn’t exist. It’s swallowed down, with all the other things she should have said today. She’s not allowed to say what she really wants to.

Before she can stop herself, she hits send.

 

* * *

 

Kara finally sees Lena on a Thursday. Kara hadn’t meant to avoid her, to side step. To disappear. But she’s been busy as Supergirl, helping with the clean up and working with the DEO. She’s been busy as Kara Danvers, reporting on everything she can and trying not to be too relieved that Cat is back.

Mostly, she’s been busy avoiding anything and everything.

Kara’s been spending too many hours alone. She purposefully hunts out situations she can throw her fists into in which she doesn’t need back up. She leaves aliens behind for pick up and lets her comm fall out her ear. When she flies off, leaving a groaning alien behind her, she tries not to wonder if Mon-el is somewhere, on a planet he doesn’t know, getting left behind like this. Alone and lost and without her.

Everything about her thoughts are too loud.

She avoided her bed, because it’s empty now, a space that wants to absorb her, a space she’d felt carefree and happy and at ease just days ago. Instead of her bed, she slept in fits and starts on her sofa and, once, on the balcony at CatCo, wrapped in her cape.

Anything to avoid the bed.

But then, the night before, she’d finally fallen down into it and curled into a ball. Her throat had been raw with sobs, her skin still chilled from flying so high just an hour before. She’d flown as high as she could, her eyes burning with the need to sleep and her chest aching with something she didn’t have a name for. Her neck was naked, the last thing from her mother gone, and it had felt like everything was trying to pull her down. This feeling welling in her chest was smothering her and with a burst of speed, she’d tried to leave it behind.

But even there, in that place in the atmosphere that almost means she’s left Earth behind, that feeling didn’t go.

Because over her head is space.

Overhead is the place Krypton should have been, and is where her parents sent her away. Where her aunt had once been. Where her best friend had once laughed so hard at a joke Kara told she’d wet herself and sworn Kara to secrecy. Overhead, somewhere, is Mon-el, and all of it is out there and Kara is here and she can’t help but wonder if she’s always going to be left behind.

The bed smells like him.

She barely sleeps, and when the sky is washed in sunrise, Kara pulls the sheets off the bed and jams them in the washing machine, adding as much powder as she dares.

The second she turns it on, she regrets it.

It seems she’s just giving every momento she has away for nothing.

Alex wants to have coffee, so Kara says she has to see Lena, because if there’s anything worse than the bed, it’s Alex and her eyes that see through Kara so easily. She’s all soft looks and hugs and Kara could lose herself in it, but she isn’t going to do that.

She won’t lose herself to this feeling that’s crushing her.

Though she thinks that, maybe, she already has.

So as soon as she lies to Alex, guilt trips in her stomach so Kara messages Lena.

Finally replying to the message from days and days ago.

It had been a simple I’m so sorry, Kara.

Kara didn’t reply, because she doesn’t know how to take that empathy.

The cafe is small. A little place tucked away in a corner with bookshelves lining the walls and soft, squishy couches. Lamps of every description litter the space and at first, it’s the opposite of where Kara would think Lena would recommend, but then as soon as Lena walks in, it fits.

She’s awkward. And so is Kara. They hug, not the lingering one of before, but rather it’s stilted. And Kara hates that she’s stilted with everyone. Like she’s a record that skips at the important bits, something subtle but enough that you can hear it and you feel like you’re missing out on the whole song, even as you still get the melody.

She’s like it with everyone, and she needs to stop. To bring herself back down. But it’s as if she’s hanging permanently overhead, trying to stop this crushing feeling that makes her feel like she can’t breathe.

Then Lena’s eyes are on her, concerned and apprehensive, and it’s enough like Alex’s to make her want to run.

“Kara…” She swallows. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m—I’m fine. It’s okay.”

Kara hates lies. But she needs this one.

“No. Not, I mean, of course I’m sorry about Mon-el—”

Lena’s heart is racing in her chest, a thundering of beats and Kara almost misses what she says next, so distracted is she by listening to that sound.

“I’m sorry. That I—I all but made that weapon.”

Kara blinks. And Lena is so sincere, across the table, coffees between them, steam rising, and Kara just blinks again.

“You’re—you’re sorry for that?”

“I, yes—if it wasn’t for me…”

And Kara finally clicks. The texted sorry was because Lena thought Kara blamed her? “What? Lena, no—no. Please. I—Supergirl told me, everything. I know what had to happen. It’s not your fault.” Kara’s clenches her jaw, for just a second. “It’s their fault. They were offered alternatives. If it wasn’t for you, the city would be gone.”

Them. It wasn’t even them. It was her. Rhea. Who brought around her own end, but in those few moments Kara sleeps and doesn’t wake reaching for Mon-El, it’s with the image of Rhea turning to dust.

Death. At Kara’s hand.

With the click of a button.

And Lena looks so relieved, then, that Kara forgets, for a second, to drown under this feelings.

It’s as if that’s all that’s needed, and they ease into conversation. Lena asking if Kara always knew Mon-el was a prince of another planet.

Kara almost spills it, then. Everything. To give something to Lena. To tell her she’s Supergirl. But she bites it down, and says she found out quickly, instead.

But Mon-el is like a burning in her throat, his name something that scorches her tongue and makes her think of her planet exploding behind her and her parents putting her in a ship when she was too young to really know what was happening. So she mentions that Alex proposed to Maggie and Lena’s eyes go wide and she quickly remembers to smile, the fakest smile Kara has ever seen on Lena’s lips.

“What?” Kara asks.

“Nothing. Nothing. That’s great news.”

Kara feels her lips twitch, and it’s foreign after days of not knowing the motion. “Maggie said no.”

Lena’s eyes widen even more. “Oh.” She clears her throat. “Poor Alex.”

“You don’t mean it.”

“I, of course I do. That’s—”

“And Alex was happy.”

Lena cocks her head. “You’re enjoying playing with this story and not telling me everything?”

“I am.” Kara picks up her cup, the feeling of it grounding her. “Maggie told her she was an idiot, but she would live with her instead. And Alex was actually relieved.”

Lena’s grinning then, and something in it lightens Kara, leaves her breathless, for just a second. Her smile always has, like she’s giving everything with it. She lets out a sigh of relief.

Just like Kara had.

“Okay. I didn’t want to say it, but that would have been crazy fast.”

And Kara just nods.

Kara leaves coffee feeling just that little bit lighter, then immediately feeling guilty

 

***

 

Kara doesn’t hate her and that makes Lena able to get through further interrogations about her mother. When they finally accept she doesn’t know where she is, she goes back to L-Corp and focuses on work.

On meetings.

On not messaging Kara with what she really wants to.

On not worrying, because Kara’s eyes were dim and she wasn’t Kara, not once in that cafe. She tried, there was a moment her lips quirked. But Mike, or Mon-El, or whatever she was supposed to call him, was gone, and Kara was broken.

It hurt to see.

They have lunch the next week, and coffee again the next day.

And Kara is the same each time.

Lena tries not to worry.

It’s normal, surely. To be like this. But she aches to help, to do something, and she has nothing to give her that can do anything.

It’s unsettling, to watch Kara like this. Like there is something irrevocably broken within her and Lena just can’t get close enough to put her back together.

She’s leaving the office when she gets a text asking if she wants to have a drink, then an address for a bar.

As if she’d say no.

She’s already had a bourbon and she needs to stop drinking in her office, but when the building empties and it’s just her, the city behind her, lit up, the moon high, Lena feels something creeping up on her she doesn’t want.

In the Uber to the bar, she sucks in breaths and doesn’t look up at the sky. Doesn’t wonder how she let her mother break her enough to fall for everything Rhea offered up.

Doesn’t think about how she contributed to the death and destruction that reigned.

Lena doesn’t like how badly she needs the validation that lead to that. It does not sit well with who she wants to be.

She wonders, sometimes, of who she would be if her biological parents had never died. If she’d be different, or worse, or the same. Potential versions of herself she can never know. Nor should she.

The bar is in a part of town Lena hasn’t been to and when she walks in, she realises it’s full of humans and aliens alike. A pool table is on one side and she finally spots Kara in a far corner, squeezed into a booth.

There’s a glass of bourbon already waiting and Kara has a drink in her glass that is the colour of apple juice but smells strong. Different.

“Hi.” There’s a husk to Kara’s voice and when Lena slides across from her, something stills in her chest.

“Hey.” Lena smiles and Kara does too, that echo of one she’s been trying at for too long now. The one that doesn’t sink into her eyes like it should.

Whenever Kara smiled, before, it was like it was with everything. Every part of her. The lilt of her had as she’d adjust her glasses.

“Thanks for the drink.”

“That’s okay.”

Lena looks around and back to Kara, who had another sip with a grimace. “Why an alien bar?”

Kara cocks her head and blinks at her. “Well, I know you now know my sister works for an organisation. So I figured you could know this is where we hang out. She’s coming later. With Maggie.”

And Lena wonders if she’s here to be a buffer. The thought makes her take a sip of her own drink. It’s smooth, perfect, and she takes another one.

“What are you drinking?” she asks.

Conversation used to run between them so easily. Now it’s all fits and starts and, watching Kara here, Lena’s starting to realise it’s not them. It’s just Kara. Like she’s not one hundred percent here. So many topics that are taboo dance around them.

Kara winces and looks down. “It’s like cider. But stronger.”

“Sounds…delightful.”

Kara laughs then, the sound exhausted. But it’s something. “It isn’t.”

They work themselves through two more and Lena realises, as she starts to feel dizzy, that she’s never seen Kara drunk before. She would have imagined a giggler, someone who grinned and got louder. But Kara is almost morose and as she starts to tilt into the table, Lena realises she needs to get her home.

“Kara?”

Chin heavy in her hand, Kara blinks up at her, eyes blue and wide and lost. “Mm?”

“Let’s get you home.”

A line appears between her eyebrows and Lena wants to smooth it away.

“But Alex is coming. And Maggie. Who I like. Did you know I like her?”

Lena smiles. “I figured.”

“I mean, I don’t like her a lot but she likes Alex a lot so I mean, that’s got to be a good thing. And I mean, I like her, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t wanna like her because I want her to be scared of me so she doesn’t hurt Alex.”

Okay, one: Lena has seen Maggie and Alex together all of one time, and Maggie looks at Alex like she’s the sun. There wasn’t much chance of that happening. And two, who could be scared of Kara Danvers? Ever?

Right now, she’s half slumped over the table and wearing a cardigan in something pastel.

“Well, I’m pretty sure Maggie likes her a whole lot.”

“She better.”

Kara actually mutters it a little darkly and it’s actually adorable and Lena actually may be quite drunk herself.

“Let’s get you home.”

Kara did giggle then, another exhausted sound, but she pushes herself up. “You said that already.”

“It was just so full of wisdrom I thought I should repeat it.”

“You said ‘wisdrom.’”

“Shush, you.”

They lean heavily against each other and Kara’s solid and warm and smells like apple and Kara, and the Uber Lena ordered is already there. They slide in and the guy glances in his mirror.

“No puking.”

Kara snorts and Lena grins at him and they take off.

It’s a quiet trip back, with Kara’s head on her shoulder and the light of her phone as she sends the worst typed message to Alex explaining. Lena lets her cheek rest on Kara’s hair and her eyes close and for a second, she lets herself think of the thing she wants and how close this feels to it.

Lena lets the Uber go at Kara’s. She wants to make sure she’s home okay and they stumble up the steps and when they trip, Kara giggles and even though it’s now just pure drunkenness, it’s not as exhausted. Something warm sits in Lena’s belly at the sound and Kara takes three shots to get the key in her lock. The door swings pen and Kara goes with it and Lena grabs her and they stumble, because Kara is a lot heavier than she looks. Kara lets out a laugh, the most real thing Lena has heard from her yet and they’re just entangled enough that Kara pulls her into a hug, there in her doorway, her dark apartment stretching out behind her.

The hallway is dark. Everything is dark, and all Lena can hear is their breathing and her own heart beating too fast. Kara tugs her in closer.

“Kara,” Lena whispers. Her words are spoken into Kara’s hair, the warmth of her pressed into Lena and even when everything is fuzzy, the feeling is everything.

“Mm?”

Her lips are so close to Lena’s neck, Lena can almost feel her hum.

“Are you okay?”

It’s a stupid question, Lena knows. But there’s an unspoken rule she doens’t ask it normally. She doesn’t ask it, and they don’t speak of Mike, and here, in the dark, pressed close, it feels like the place for rules is anywhere but here and Lena is just so worried.

Kara tenses, muscles tight under Lena’s arms and she pulls back, just slightly, her eyes cast in shadow and inches from Lena’s. She stares at her, gaze steady and solid and so like the depth of the sky over the city, and Lena has a feeling of deja vu that makes no sense.

“No.”

The word breathes over her lips and before Lena can say anything, can tell her that, kind of, Lena isn’t that okay either, to tell Kara that she’ll do anything that helps, Kara’s closed the gap and brushed her lips over Lena’s.

Everything stills. A cliche. True, though. For one solid moment, the world seems to stop. To stumble. As if the Earth itself has skipped on its axis.

And then it comes roaring back because Lena’s heart slams against her ribs and Kara’s nose grazes her own and when she kisses Lena this time, it’s with intent on her lips. She presses in and her lips part, barely. Kara’s tongue runs over her lip and then against Lena’s tongue and Lena gasps, her breath hitching in her chest and her fingers grasping at Kara’s shirt.

And then she’s gone, pulling back, cold air where warmth just was.

Kara’s shaking her head. “Sorry. Drunk.”

And her voice is thick, like tears are pushing their way out and she’s fighting them. Something shines on her cheek.

And Lena stands and swallows. Watches her retreat a step further into her apartment.

“Thanks, for tonight.” Kara’s voice is thicker.

And Lena nods.

And steps back.

And Kara closes the door and Lena just stares at it.

Because Kara Danvers is utterly broken, but if Lena could have told her what she really wanted?

That? That would have been it.

But what Kara wants isn’t Lena. What Kara wants is too far away to even comprehend, unable to come back.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thanks for the comments and enthusiasm. You all inspired me to write the second chapter faster. I don't want to tag Sanvers in this yet, as the focus is definitely on Kara and Lena, but they may get tagged later on if the plot I'm thinking takes off or they continue to play the role they do here.

That kiss is a ghost that won’t leave Lena alone. Her bed is expansive and empty, and she runs her fingertips over and over her lips, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling. Kara was drunk, and hurting, and that was all it was. But still, it haunts her. She feels inflated, like she could float away at the memory of how soft her lips had been, at the slide of Kara’s tongue over her own.

But the lost look in that blue, the hurt around all Kara’s edges, brings her slamming back down. Hard.

Kara needs a friend.

Not this. She doesn’t need Lena like this.

 

* * *

 

Alex has seen Kara sad. And lost.

Alex saw Kara when she first crashed to Earth, the stars in her hair and the flame of a burning planet trailing behind her. She was so fragile and broken, so stoic. She barely spoke. She picked up English faster than anyone ever should be able, the accent delightful on her tongue. Alex had missed it when it faded too fast.

But still she barely spoke.

Not really.

She watched, though. Kara watched everything. Her eyes bright and wide, the echoes of a screaming planet still there, but she watched them all. And, piece by piece, Alex realised Kara was learning: she was learning to be human.

Because there was something so utterly alien about Kara.

It was in the set of her shoulders, the jut of her chin. The accent, too, Alex supposed. The clack of syllables and the rise of vowels she stuttered over at first. But mostly there was something in her eye that just wasn’t…human.

She learned fast.

But Alex has always been able to see it. The way Kara tries so hard to fit in. The way she measures herself and her reactions.

The first night Kara really talked was on the roof.

Kara was often up there, and Alex climbed up after her, bringing a blanket she never really needed. She’d drape it over both of them and huddle next to her. Night by night, Kara crept closer until the norm was them together, under the silent sky, the moon heavy above, the stars thick and bright, their sides pressed close.

And then Kara started to speak.

She spoke about a science project she’d worked on on Krypton. About a friend that helped her. About how it had gotten Kara noticed. The pride in her mother’s eye, Kara’s voice thick and hitching over the word.

The night was bright, with such a full moon and so many stars, and they lit up Kara’s face. Alex hadn’t been able to look away. To tear her gaze from the way it was like Kara’s skin and eyes had absorbed the light, reflecting it back out.

The pain in them, at just the mention of her mother. Her school. Her studies. Her friends.

It went on for months and months, after that. Kara quiet when she finally started school, quiet at the dinner table. Watching, learning, absorbing.

But on the roof?

Stories fell from her mouth, an agony in her words, thick and heady, even as at times her lips would quirk up, eyes shining as she said something that amused her. A memory that made her voice waver even as she smiled.

Afterwards, Alex would lay awake and wonder why Kara would talk about it when it hurt her so much. Why she would rehash it over and over again. Why, when she chose to speak, it was about the planet that was long gone and dead, in pieces in space.

It took years, years after Kara had stopped doing it, for Alex to realise.

She was recounting her history. Putting it into words to stop it fading.

She was the only one who carried it, after all.

They didn’t speak about Clark.

Or Kal-El, as Kara called him, the one word that sounded natural in her mouth, at first.

But even without speaking about it, Alex could never understand how he’d just give away his only family. The last of their world.

But it took years for Kara to stop speaking about Krypton.

And then suddenly, Alex realised she hadn’t heard anything for a long time.

But still there was that something in Kara’s eye.

So Alex has seen Kara broken. She’s seen her sister carry the weight of a planet on her shoulders and not falter. A history she is the last to carry. That’s something q teenager should never have to take with her.

But something is different this time.

“She’s avoiding me.”

Maggie looks up from the pool table and Alex tries not stare down her shirt. It’s not her fault her girlfriend is wearing a crisp white button down that’s buttoned delightfully low. She fails, and her eyes glance down, then back up. Maggie smirks a little, Alex clearly caught out, and takes the shot. “Who’s avoiding you?”

Alex grimaces as Maggie’s shot sinks two balls. She’s getting better. Alex actually loses some without doing it on purpose now. “Who do you think?”

Maggie sighs and holds the cue against her side, head cocking in the way it always does when she’s really thinking on what Alex is trying to say.

Because she cares what Alex has to say.

“Kara just needs time, Alex.”

Alex huffs and wishes she could explain that she’s not good with giving time. She likes things fixed and dealt with. She likes her sister smiling and whole and not this devastated version.

“I know. I just—”

“Hate waiting?”

Alex rolls her eyes, her lips stretching up in spite of herself and Maggie gives her a knowing look that’s half smirk-half understanding and takes another shot. With another great cleavage view. She misses and Alex steps up to the table to eye off her next play. She’s been trying to get the purple into the left pocket the last two shots but is too distracted. The jumbled message she got from Kara an hour ago won’t leave her alone.

Kara was too drunk and Lena had taken her back?

Kara never drinks. Well, that one time.

But generally, she doesn’t.

She also talks. To Alex, at least. She’s always done that. Now she’s hard focus as Supergirl and just…not there, as Kara.

Alex misses her sister.

Gnawing her lip, Alex takes a shot. And finally sinks it. She stands, triumphant.

Maggie is just watching her. All raised eyebrows and knowing look. Alex sags.

“Okay, yes, I hate waiting. But, it’s, it’s something else.”

Maggie walks around the table towards her and something in Alex’s chest swells, because she doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of watching Maggie walk towards her. She leans her hip against the pool table and cross her arms, staring Alex right in the eye. Alex can feel her warmth this close, and she just wants to sink into her.

“What is it?”

And Maggie’s concerned. For Kara.

That thing swells even more.

“She’s just. I’ve never seen her like this. This, lost.”

“She just lost the guy she loves.”

“I know. I know. And of course, if this was you—” Alex can’t even go there, her eyes dropping away and coming back up to meet Maggie’s. Which are still on her. Patient. Waiting for Alex to get to where she’s going. “But I know her. And she never avoids me. Not like this. I’m worried about her.”

Then Maggie’s hand is on her hip, warm and firm and tugging her a little closer. Alex’s arm slides around her neck.

“Go check on her.”

“Are you sure? This was our night.”

“I’m sure. Besides.” Maggie’s grin is dazzling. “We’ll be moving in together soon, and you’ll be sick of me.”

Alex shakes her head. “Impossible.”

Because it is.

The kiss Maggie drops on her lips is quick, soft, everything. “True. You did want to marry me after months of dating, so…”

Alex groans, half laugh and half real. “I’ll never live that down, will I?”

Because she meant it when she said it. She really did. But woah, too soon. Too fast.

“Alex Danvers.” Maggie smirks again. “Go big or go home.”

And it’s true. Alex has no idea how to do things any other way.

“Go see your sister.”

So she does, with one last kiss to send her there.

Her knocks echo and it takes too many until she hears Kara stumbling out of bed and towards the door. Her message said she was going to sleep, but it’s been a week since she’s seen Kara beyond anything DEO related. Worry has been twisting in her stomach again and again. and Alex just wants her sister to be okay. Because Kara has too much to carry already, and the pain in her voice on the DEO balcony after Mon El left won’t leave Alex alone.

Kara looks terrible when the door opens. Which Kara never looks. Kryptonians don’t tend to look terrible. Even on no sleep, Kara always looked charged by the sun.

She leans heavily against the door and squints. “Alex?”

Her voice is croaky, broken, and Alex knows when Kara’s been crying. It rends her chest that her sister is like this. “You’re avoiding me.”

Kara swallows thickly. “I didn’t mean to tonight. I drank that horrible drink.”

“I know. You messaged me.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

“I need to sleep.”

“Can I stay?”

And Kara actually hesitates, which hurts more than anything else in that moment. But after a second, she nods and turns, stumbling back to her bed and falling into it in a heap. Alex locks the door behind her and tugs off her jumper, kicks off her shoes and leaves her pants over the sofa. With a wiggle, she pulls her bra off through her shirt sleeves. Kara is breathing heavily already, a lump in the bed. Alex drags on some pyjama bottoms from Kara’s drawer. When she crawls into the bed, Kara rolls over to face away and Alex presses into her, her arm wrapped around Kara’s middle.

She refuses to let her sister feel alone.

Kara’s entire body tenses, and then Kara’s fingers link with Alex’s and tug her in tighter.

The sob that Kara lets out almost cleaves Alex in two. And Alex wants to ask her, if it is just about Mon El, or if all of this is running just a little bit deeper. But the question feels inconsiderate, terrible, so she pushes her face into the back of Kara’s neck and holds her tighter. Kara cries in gulps, her body radiating heat and Alex doesn’t let her go all night.

But when she wakes up in the morning, Kara is gone, her side of the bed cool and the lingering smell of her body wash is in the apartment.

 

* * *

 

The Cadmus videos start again.

They have so much footage of the invasion. The technology so far out of Earth’s grasp. The screaming and terror. The utter destruction left behind. They play it on a loop, they call for people to protest. To join. T0 not accept the invasion that’s apparently happening under their noses, even if that direct threat is gone.

And it takes so much for Lena to not throw her remote at the TV and let it shatter at the utter idiocy of her mother.

Instead she stands, tapping the device against her chin and glaring at the screen.

If not for Supergirl, Lena would be dead multiple time over, yet here was her mother, insisting that every alien be painted with the same brush.

She will never change.

And Lena needs to remember that.

It’s like the desperate grip on her arm is still there, the odd look in her mother’s eyes as she’d told Lena she couldn’t trust the people she thought she could.

What did she even mean by that?

The Cadmus video ends, but Lena continues to stare at the screen.

What are they hoping to achieve? And how?

Two questions that need answering, but Lena has no idea how they can get those answers.

The first one, seems to be that aliens are gone.

But that seems too simple.

Is there something deeper?

And then the screen is filled with Cat Grant and Lena, despite herself, smiles.

She is derisive, and witty, and cutting.

She shreds Cadmus, brings up Supergirl, highlights the story of the groups of aliens who fought back and protected humans when Rhea was trying to take over the city. Talks about unification, anti fascism.

And all with a raise of her eyebrow and dry words.

It may help, it may not.

The rest of Lena’s day passes in meetings and she wears her employees suspicion with a straightening of her shoulders and a look she learnt from her mother.

Her phone doesn’t ping all day and by mid afternoon, Lena finally messages Kara.

 

How’s your head? Because mine is hurting a little.

 

She holds back from mentioning the kiss. That ghost is still following her, the feeling of Kara’s lips now more like a burn, one she can’t make fade. Hours later, she gets a reply.

 

I have a fast metabolism. Lena snorts at that. She’s seen how much Kara puts away. That’s an understatement. So no headaches for me. Lunch tomorrow?

 

And Lena agrees, because yes, lunch tomorrow.

The lunch is nice. It’s at a vegan place that Kara tries not to scrunch her nose up at. That air is still around her, that something broken, and Lena just wants to break through to her. To hear that laugh she heard the other night, but not layered in alcohol. Kara always laughed freely, smiled easily. She got a wrinkle in her brow when she was thinking and her eyes always lit up, especially when the sun was on her. She was stunning, layered in sunlight.

But there’s something drooped about her, still.

They don’t mention the kiss.

And Lena wonders if Kara doesn’t remember it at all.

A kiss doesn’t have to mean anything. People do it all the time.

They still don’t mention Mike, Mon-El—whatever his name is. And Kara is still difficult to talk to, anything that broke down a little with drinks in her built back up, a wall Lena has no idea how to get past.

But then Kara tilts her head. “Thank you. For—for having lunch with me. I’m sorry, if I was a mess the other night.”

“You aren’t a mess, Kara.”

And Kara snorts a little, nothing amused in her expression. “Well, thank you, for that lie.” And there is almost a tone in there of joking, now. “I just, I know I’m not the best company. But I—you always make me feel a little better.”

The warmth in Lena’s chest is almost suffocating.

When they finish, they hug, and Lena knows she doesn’t imagine it, but Kara pulls her in tighter, buries her face in Lena’s neck for just a moment. She pulls back slowly, the warmth and softness of her cheek grazing Lena’s and then in a blink Kara has turned and is walking away, a promise for coffee soon left behind her.

And they get that coffee, and then another.

And still any smile that Kara offers is dim, like it’s an effort to tug out of her.

They talk about Cadmus, and what they could be planning. Kara asks about L-Corp. And Lena asks about CatCo and what it’s like to have Cat back. Kara almost, almost brightens talking about that.

They still don’t talk about what happened.

And Lena doesn’t know what’s good or bad for Kara, anymore.

The weekend rolls around again, Friday night brewing clouds and storms. And Lena’s in the same state as the last weekend. It’s past nine in the office, and the building is silent. The balcony is all cold air and and wind and Lena’s hair is whipped around.

Something like ice in her blood, in her system. Something that tastes like loneliness, and across the street, a building that’s still being repaired sticks out. She takes a gulp of her drink, the decanter empty. She’s only on her second. And soon she’ll go home, and try to hide from the guilt bubbling her throat that her work on the portal caused that destruction.

Ruined lives.

Lead to Kara Danvers being a wreck of herself.

Her phone buzzes and she’s already out of the door before she can answer Kara’s invitation to the bar again.

 

* * *

 

The storm brewing is going to be a big one. Here, amongst it all, thick in the damp clouds and with electricity creeping along her skin, Kara can taste it. Smell it. The thick, heady freshness of it. The clouds are so grey they could almost be black and, distantly, thunder rumbles.

She sucks in a breath and it’s like breathing in a storm.

So she sucks in another and hopes it’ll spark this feeling that’s settled heady over her skin, thick in her bones, weighing her down still. That it’ll get rid of it so this heaviness is just…gone.

She’s still avoiding Alex.

Waking up wrapped in a hug from her made Kara feel, for a second, marginally better until everything had crashed around her and she left fast, silently. Alex sleeps like the dead and Kara has an advantage of super powers.

And the rest of the week she only sees her at the DEO, where her and everyone else’s eyes track her with pity.

And Alex’s with something more.

An understanding. A knowing.

One Kara doesn’t want to see.

Because she has no way to put this feeling into words. This utter desolation, this realisation, that everyone leaves. That every link to who she was, to what made her Kara is gone and falling apart around her.

And it’s not fair. She has Alex. And Eliza. And, somewhere, Jeremiah. Maybe. She has James. And Winn. And J’Onn. And Supergirl.

She has so much.

But sending Mon-El away has left something so deep in Kara she doesn’t know what to do.

No, it hasn’t left something. It’s torn something open and everything is spilling out and she’s trying to tape herself back together, and is lost as to how.

After evading Alex all week, Kara has figured she’ll show at the bar like Alex asked, and try to play nice.

She lands in the ally, her suit at home and hoping she was fast enough that no one saw Kara Danvers flying. The bar is buzzing, the storm putting everyone on edge. And, slowly, even with a drink in hand, the stuff that actually works on her, Kara feels like she’s suffocating.

So she has another gulp and tries to ignore the voice that tells her to stop, because what if Supergirl is needed?

Alex will be here soon and Kara starts to feel panic creeping up her spine. She’ll ask if Kara is okay and Kara will nod, too enthusiastically, and adjust her glasses and say yes, she’s fine. And Alex will look at her like she knows she’s lying and Kara can’t do it. So she invites Lena to come.

Lena, a rock in it all.

Who seems to know not to push. To ask questions.

Whose hug after coffee had left something aching in Kara, something like deja vu. Something like she’d been that close before, and the smell of her skin where her neck meets her shoulder was something she knew. But Kara doesn’t remember ever hugging her like that.

That aching feeling didn’t go away the rest of the day.

She can still taste the storm brewing in the clouds. The smell of it is in her hair, in her clothes. She breathes in deep, takes in the distant taste of of rumbling rain. That smell that hits you before it’s even really started.

She wants to be back there, in a suspended place where the world isn’t really existing.

Where she can pretend she’s not angry. She’s not sad.

Pretend she hasn’t been waking up with the taste of a planet exploding on her tongue and the sound of it falling apart around her in her ears.

The cling of her mother as she’d hugged her goodbye.

She can pretend none of that is happening.

“Hey.”

Kara jumps and turns, and Lena is there. It’s as if a switch goes off, something calm in Kara’s brain and she takes in a breath and feels like oxygen is actually in her system again.

“Hi.”

“Deep in thought?”

Lena’s eyes are so green. The green of parts of the sea. Of the grass.

The green of krytponite. The colour of Rhea’s blood.

Who Kara killed.

Kara swallows. “What are you drinking?”

They get settled with drinks at the bar. Kara has a fresh one and thinks she should probably stop. Lena’s knee is against hers and it’s like an anchor, something tethering, and Kara wonders when this happened. When she felt like could breathe near Lena, when she hasn’t seen anyone else beyond work things since everything happened, because when she’s with them everything somehow feels worse.

Why it’s Lena she’s seeing, so often, and no one else.

After thirty minutes, Alex still hasn’t shown and then Kara’s phone beeps and she breathes a sigh of relief when she reads the message.

“Everything okay?”

“Alex has a work emergency.”

“Kara?” And Kara meets her eyes. “Is everything okay?”

Her heart stills, then. Because everything feels so far from okay. “I—I’ve been avoiding her.”

And alcohol makes her words slide out unbidden, apparently.

“Why?”

Kara swallows. That’s an excellent question. Why?

“Because.” Kara stares down at her drink, her hand wrapped around it on top of the bar. The air is all gone from the room. “She knows me too well.”

Kara misses her. She misses everything. She misses not feeling like this. She misses Mon-El. Horribly, strangely, she misses her mother. Her father. Her planet. She misses sitting with her sister on the sofa and talking like the words didn’t burn her mouth with their truth.

She misses the riotousness, as she judged her father for the things he created. That feeling that’s gone as she judges herself for doing the same thing.

And with Alex, she feels all of this, because Alex is her honest place. Her safe place.

Lena’s hand is on her knee and Kara knocks the rest of her drink back. Her eyes are blurring, damp, and she needs to move, to fly. She’s not allowed to fly now, though, after two of those, and she has no idea what to do.

“I’m sorry, Kara.”

Kara nods, tightly. “Excuse me.”

The warmth of Lena’s hand stays on her knee, spreads along her skin. Touch. Something so simple, yet something she’s been shying away from. From everyone but Lena.

The bathroom is cool, empty. The water she runs over her wrists does nothing, and she wishes she had drunk as much as the other night.

She just wants to forget. For a second. Or more. To not be trapped in these thoughts.

The door creaks open behind her and Kara wonders why she didn’t lock it. In the mirror, staring at her, Lena blinks.

“Sorry. I just, I wanted to check on you.”

Turning slowly, Kara nods. Words are trapped in her throat, a torrent of them, a mess of thought and feeling. A mess of everything.

What was it Lena said? She wasn’t a mess?

She is. Too much of one, right now.

And Lena is here, looking at her.

She will never know why she does it. Why when she steps forward into Lena’s space, Lena doesn’t shy away. Doesn’t look shocked. Why, when Kara, ever so slowly, leans forward and brushes her lips to Lena’s, it feels familiar. And why Lena kisses her back, hesitantly, as if it’s Kara who might run away and not Lena. Who should, given that Kara has no idea what she’s doing anymore.

Why does it feel like she’s doing something she’s done before?

Nothing feels that way anymore, and the relief of something that does sends her pressing into that feeling, searching for more of it. The way Lena grasps at her shirt, her fingers tugging Kara, just a little, into her is achingly familiar too. It doesn’t grate with everything like the rest of Kara’s life. They stumble back against the door, Kara careful, always careful. Lena’s pressed against the wood and the touch of her tongue on Kara’s lips makes Kara part them. Someone’s breath hitches, hikes. Lena groans, softly, into her mouth and Kara doesn’t understand how the feeling isn’t new. She feels like she’s done this before, and everything else from the last couple of weeks has felt like something she’s never done before, has left her wanting, aching for something that doesn’t leave her floundering and somehow, this doesn’t.

Lena’s kiss doesn’t throw her off kilter, but instead centres her.

Kara’s hands thread into her hair, nails scraping lightly at the back of her neck and Lena arches into her, pressing them closer. This time, it’s Kara who moans. The sound seems only to make Lena her tug her closer. Their thighs slip together, Lena’s hips rock and the contact is everything.

There’s nothing to feel but the warm wet of Lena’s mouth, the fingers that have slipped under Kara’s shirt and graze over her skin.

When Kara falls to her knees, she’s following instinct. Her brain is quiet for the first time in far too long and her palms run over the cream of Lena’s thighs, pushing her skirt up to her waist. Her nose and lips follow them, trace the same pattern, but slower. Teeth nipping and lips soothing, tongue tracing patterns, eventually, at Lena’s hip. And, finally, she tugs her underwear down and Lena steps out of them like it’s all she wants, her hand in Kara’s hair. When Kara looks up at her, her other hand is gripping the edge of the door frame as if it alone is holding her up. The green of her eyes is intense, gripping, and Kara keeps her eyes on Lena’s even as her fingers slide into wetness and her tongue is against the very centre of her. A leg is over her shoulder, Lena’s heel digging into her back and it doesn’t take long.

It’s too short.

Kara needs more.

But she curls her fingers anyway, meets Lena thrust for thrust. And too soon, Lena throws her head back with a thump. Even though Kara is sure she’s not completely finished, she’s pulling Kara up, their lips together and Lena moaning into her mouth at the taste of herself on Kara’s lips. Then a hand is in Kara’s pants and Kara almost breaks apart at the feeling of it, of a thumb on her clit and fingers that curve. She almost cries out, tearing her lips from Lena’s to drop her forehead on her shoulder, her lips pressed into her neck to try and smother herself. They’re stumbling backwards, the sound of the lock clicking as Lena throws the hand not in Kara’s pants back to turn it barely registering. The cold metal of the sink seeps through her pants as she half sits on it, Lena between her legs. The angle gives Lena better access and Kara does cry out then, softly, something almost keening, a sound she doesn’t recognise as her own. She pulls Lena in tighter, drops her head back down into her neck, and sucks on the skin under her lips. She smells the same, like Lena, and Kara wishes she could stay right there, then, in this moment where there’s nothing in her mind but the feeling of Lena’s fingers and the heat spreading through her limbs.

When she comes, Lena lets her ride it out, not moving until Kara’s still.

Her lips are in Kara’s hair, against her ear, along her cheek and when they’re back on Kara’s, the kiss is lingering, almost languid, and Kara doesn’t want to break it.

But she does. And lets her forehead fall against Lena, her hands against Lena’s neck, thumb grazing her jaw. And, finally, Kara opens her eyes. The green is vibrant, pupils blown and Kara wants to fall into them and not get out.

Instead, reality crashes around her ears and something that tastes like guilt burns in her throat, bubbles up and pushes at everything. She slides off the sink, surprised it held, and suddenly, she needs to run.

To hide.

Which isn’t fair, and she knows that.

But she does it anyway.

“I—I have to go.”

And Lena just gives her a smile, something there that Kara doesn’t recognise. “I know.”

Her cheeks are flushed, pink on her neck and there’s a bruise form Kara’s mouth and that guilt flares even more. So she turns and runs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're all my favourites. Don't tell the others ;)  
> So, this chapter has Sanvers fluff, because everything else is just so angsty. So enjoy? Maybe it's time to tag them in here. I'm just never sure when tagging a couple that's not the main focus of a story.  
> Chapter approximation has gone up as I had a small plot idea to give this a bit of substance. That will make an appearance next chapter.  
> You all rock, seriously. Thanks for reading this angst fest. Blame Melissa Benoist and her utterly delightfully broken acting ability at the end of the finale for inspiring me to write Kara this heart broken and sad.

Maggie likes things simple. Uncomplicated. Her job is complicated enough that her private life needs to be anything but. For a long time, bridge after bridge was burned because of this. Because of her need to succeed in her career.

The only one that wasn’t burned was the one her aunt. Her last piece of family.

The only one she needs, really.

But then Alex bowled her way into Maggie’s life. She was like being hit by a comet, sudden and bright and brilliant. Explosive. Life ending.

In the good way. A new beginning. Eye opening.

Maggie never used to be such a sap, but there’s something about Alex Danvers that brings it out in her.

There are times Maggie thinks her girlfriend may like her gun more than she likes Maggie, and somehow, that just makes Maggie crazy love her more.

Who’d have known?

“What about this one?”

Alex’s voice is still husky with sleep. The mid-morning light’s spilling through Maggie’s window, falling over the bare skin of Alex’s back as she lays sprawled on her stomach in just a pair of underwear. Her hair is all mussed, especially at the back, and the image of her head thrown back into the pillow last night comes to mind. A tablet is in her hand, her chin digging into a pillow and Maggie wants to take a photo of her like that, so at home in Maggie’s bed, ankles crossed in the air.

“Which one?” Maggie asks.

Time seems to have stopped this morning. It’s rare, for the two of them to have time like this. With no emergency dragging one or both away.

Never once with one of them holding resentment over it. Just understanding. Their jobs are hectic. Important.

And they both get that.

Maybe, just maybe, Maggie can keep Alex for a long time yet.

“The two bedroom one, here.”

Alex’s voice is lazy. She doesn’t even shift, just wiggles the tablet. Maggie huffs and pushes off from where she’d been leaning against the headboard, and lays over Alex’s back, letting her weight fall a bit too heavily and smirking at Alex’s playful “oof”. Her skin’s sun-and-sleep warm. Maybe they can stay in bed until the afternoon, no real clothes to speak of. She lets her chin fall against Alex’s shoulder, their cheeks together and her legs wriggling between Alex’s.

Being tiny has its advantages sometimes, and this is one of them.

“Which one?”

Alex’s head has turned, her nose brushing Maggie’s and lips just managing to graze Maggie’s in this position. She hums contentedly. And then they’re kissing, Maggie shifting up just a little more, Alex’s tongue flicking her top lip and a groan building in Maggie’s chest. When Maggie pulls back, Alex chases her lips with a soft whine and, really, maybe they can stay here the entire day.

“Which one?”

Alex’s eyes open lazily. “Hm?”

“You had one to show me.”

She blinks, slowly. “Oh.” She grins, and it’s something else utterly lazy. Morning Alex, relaxed, comfortable, has fast become one of Maggie’s favourite things. She turns back to the tablet and Maggie drops one last kiss on her cheek before turning to look, her chin back on Alex’s shoulder.

“This one.” Alex taps on the listing and and pulls up photos of a place filled with light and hardwood floors.

“It’s nice.”

And it is.

Nice. More than nice.

“Should I request a viewing?”

“I think so.”

Alex starts tapping at the screen and Maggie’s bored after ten seconds. She pushes up a little, on her knees, and kisses Alex’s cheek again, Alex’s head turning into it even as her eyes stay on the tablet. She kisses her neck, then just behind her ear. The nape of her neck earns a shiver. A graze of Maggie’s teeth over her shoulder blade gets a hitch of breath.

Alex is a champion at focus, but when Maggie glances up, her lips on the curve of Alex’s ass, the tablet’s dropped to the bed and Alex’s face is pressed into the pillow. It only takes a nudge of Maggie’s hand to get Alex to roll over, for her hands to pull Maggie up into a kiss so full of need Maggie’s breathless when it ends.

“The listing,” Maggie whispers into her neck.

“Can wait.”

And Alex grins and Maggie laughs, then gasps when Alex’s fingers run up her thigh.

Hours later, it’s after three pm and they’re still in bed and haven’t bothered with underwear this time.

“We should get up.”

Maggie pushes on her elbows, face scrunched up. “Why would you suggest such a thing?”

Her put on affronted face cracks when Alex chuckles and pushes her hair behind her ear. Its a mess,lank and limp after the last round took it from from needing a wash to desperate for a wash.

“Shouldn’t we, I don’t know.” Alex shrugs and it makes the pillow they were sharing shift. “Embrace the day?”

“I feel this is embracing the day.”

“True. There was lots of embracing things.”

Maggie rolls her eyes. “That’s the best you have?”

“I’ve had so many orgasms you’re lucky I can make words.”

The warmth in Maggie’s chest spreads and she can’t help it. “I love you.”

Those words are still new enough to feel big in her mouth, inflated, meaningful, and she hopes that never leaves her. She also hopes that soft look in Alex’s eye never stops appearing at the sound of them, the way everything in her face just looks amazed, as if she has no idea why Maggie’s saying it to her.

Maggie’s just going to have to keep saying it until she really gets it.

“I love you too.”

Alex’s fingers thread into her hair and she tugs her down into a kiss. She almost gets lulled into it again, Alex’s legs sliding between her own, their skin flush together, but she pulls back with a laugh.

“We should at least eat,” Maggie manages.

Alex raises her eyebrows and the smirk on her lips makes Maggie want to kiss it off of her.

“Food, Danvers.”

The blinding grin gives her the same reaction.

“We could order pizza?” Alex is apparently on board with the whole ‘not getting out of bed’ plan.

Maggie perks up. “Okay. Just not with pineapple?”

Alex’s face falls. “Pineapple on half?”

“You’re killing me. Fine. With pepperoni.”

“Do you think they’ll deliver beer?”

“See, that’s why I love you.”

And that soft look is there again, and then they’re kissing again and almost forget that to actually get the pizza delivered, they have to order it.

While Alex does that, Maggie sneaks off for a shower and Alex appears a few minutes later, naked and stepping in and Maggie couldn’t be more delighted, really.

Especially when Alex rubs shampoo in her hair, standing behind her.

Because Maggie is a sucker for a head rub and if she doesn’t talk too much, Alex gets distracted by talking herself and does this for ages.

“Kara is still avoiding me.”

Like now.

Only, it’s not normally a topic that leaves them both feeling heavy. Normally Alex will ramble about work and Maggie just closes her eyes and lets her fingers work magic.

But Kara is something that leaves them both unsure. And Maggie is worried, of course. Kara and she have worked their way into a friendship, at least based on the fact that Alex is their number one and they share that.

It’s Alex and the way her sister is breaking her apart that leaves Maggie so concerned.

“I’m sorry you had to cancel on her last night.”

“Stupid alien.”

It was a big one, one they collaborated on and it’s why they both ended up at Maggie’s after, at 1am and dripping some kind of slime that had led to a shower. Then to other things. Then to this day that so far has been the highlight of Maggie’s month.

“Do you think she was mad?” Maggie asks.

“I think.” Alex’s voice is small and Maggie turns, their wet skin sliding and Alex’s arms falling around her shoulders and pulling them tight together. She’s dangerously close to getting soap in her eyes but, right now, she doesn’t care. Because Alex has that wide eyed, biting lip thing going on. The one when she’s wrapped up in worry and has no idea what to do with it. “I think she was probably relieved.”

Not just worry. Hurt. Hurt is lacing Alex’s voice and Maggie swallows, her hands cupping Alex’s cheeks, thumbs grazing her cheek bones, her jaw. Her eyes are wide and wet, and when Alex is close to tears, something tight always clamps in Maggie’s chest. She hasn’t seen her look like this since she found her drowning her sorrows in whiskey after her dad.

“Hey.” Maggie’s voice is low, the shower pounding behind them and steam rising up. “She loves you.”

“I know.” Alex tries her best to smile. It’s watery and broken and worse than just the tears. “I know that. But she always talks to me, and now she’s just so shut down. I don’t—I don’t know how to reach her, Maggie.”

The voice crack on her name almost makes Maggie crack herself.

Maggie isn’t great with advice. She always messed things up before, again and again, so she figured if she can’t get things right herself, she had no business helping others. But this is Alex, and she looks ready to snap open right here and Maggie needs to stop that.

“Just be there. Just do what you’ve been doing. She knows you’re here.”

“What if—” And Alex actually has to swallow down whatever is building in her. “What if this is breaking her and she won’t let me help her put herself back together?”

Maggie cocks her head and smiles as softly as she can. “Maybe she needs to break apart before she can get back together?”

That’s not what Alex wants to hear, or what she wants to be the truth in general, Maggie knows. But Maggie also knows a little about that broken thing that can sit in your chest and how, sometimes, you just need to ride it out.

Alex nods. Just the once. “I don’t think this is just about Mon-El.”

Maggie has no idea what it’s about. She doesn’t know enough. But what she does know makes it sound like of course it’s not just about Mon-El. It’s about being a refugee, the sole one, of a world no one here has any understanding of. About sacrificing everything, even the thing that was giving you a little bit of happiness.

It’s about Kara Danvers, who Maggie can’t begin to understand, not really.

“Me neither.”

And Alex looks almost relieved to have finally said it, and for someone to agree.

 

* * *

 

The sky is stretched overhead, a blanket, something all encompassing. It’s a dark night, the moon almost nothing, just the stars trying to light up the sky. Kara’s flying on her back, her cape falling straight down, fluttering gently, her hair in curls under her.

Gravity is a strange thing.

It tugs parts of her back down, but not the rest of her.

Probably the only being on Earth that happens to, except Kal-El.

There’s something in that, but she’s thought too much today to want to see what.

Because she woke up this morning and remembered everything. Every details of the way her head was awash in everything the night before and all she wanted was to escape it.

And that she kissed Lena to do it.

Heat crawls into her cheeks and she squeezes her eyes shut, the sky disappearing and just darkness for company, and the sound of the breeze, her hair and cape. The loneliness in her gut that’s been there since her planet turned to nothing behind her. That’s always there, never gone, but she hates how much it’s reared up now, drowning her.

So a kiss to forget it.

Not just kiss.

She had sex with Lena Luthor to do it.

And Lena not only let her, but kissed her back with something desperate in her fingers, with something that has branded Kara’s lips and not left her alone all day. Something that finally set spark to that thing that is bleeding out in her and she has no idea what to do about it. There was something familiar in that kiss and for the first time, Kara wonders what she did the first night drunk at the bar. It’s a black swirling memory of nothing from when Lena arrived, then a blur of a car ride home, and then Alex at her door.

And then there was that familiarity that made her make some questionable decisions last night.

When she finally opens her eyes again, there’s a satellite inching it’s way across the sky and everything else is as it was.

Of course.

Because this high, which is nowhere near as high as she can go, Kara can taste the lead. A human would have no chance of doing so, but she can. Theres a metallic tang in the air, even so low, a thickness not there before. She skims her hands through the air as she would if she was floating on water, and she can almost feel it. Like gritty dust in the air.

So of course the sky is as it was.

Her stomach twists and she tries not to think of the word that’s playing in her head.

It isn’t cheating on Mon-El. Not really.

But it feels like it.

And at that thought she twists, the air cold on her blazing cheeks as she plummets back to the city as fast as she can, dropping like a stone and pulling up at the last second, her body almost grazing concrete.

That thought, that idea of cheating, the guilt that is slick in her insides, thick in her blood, thick as it slides through her vessels, makes her want to see Alex, to sit next to her and fall into her and ask her, really, what she thinks about all of this. She has two missed calls and a text she’s made excuses to. Kara could, if she wanted, go to Alex at any second. She knows this.

But something is stopping her and Kara knows it’s herself. It’s that she doesn’t want to confront a single bit of that. But her stomach is still twisting and rolling and she needs something.

She hasn’t messaged Lena all day.

Which just adds to that terrible feeling.

Lena, who has been nothing but a good friend. Who Kara just wants to tell everything, not just Mon-El, but this hole eating her up. But Lena doesn’t know she’s Supergirl, so that part has to be kept locked away. She’s getting more and more tired of that lie.

Lena, who seemed more than happy to kiss her back.

Lena, who Kara left behind in a dirty bathroom when she deserves so much more than that.

Kara’s apartment is cold, empty. Dark.

 

* * *

 

When Lena was shopping for an apartment, her major stipulation was a balcony. She spends so many hours inside, surrounded by people, that she needs this space. Somewhere outside. Where she can stand on nights like this and not feel like walls are creeping in on her.

Lena’s exhausted. Because after Kara walked away last night, which Lena can’t even fault her for, Lena pulled her skirt back down and wondered when the last time she’d felt so muddled after sex was.

Not wrong. Not dirty. Not terrible.

Just…muddled.

It was a long time ago.

She stayed for another drink, one she drank too fast, and then took an Uber home.

It was tempting not to shower. The smell of Kara lingered on her skin, and something in her wanted to keep that feeling with her so when she woke up in the morning there’d be some kind of proof that none of it had been imagined. But she needn’t have worried, because even after her shower, lying in bed, the ceiling looming over her, Kara felt tattooed over her limbs, sewn into the very depths of her. The desperation in her eyes, the curl of her fingers. The look on her face when she’d knelt on the ground in front of Lena like all she could see was Lena.

Even when Lena knew Kara was doing it because all she could think of was someone else.

Lena barely slept, her thoughts going around and around, legs kicking restlessly at the covers and watching the light slowly trickle in. It left patterns on the ceiling that faded and were replaced by others.

And hating that all she wanted to do was call Kara and ask if she was okay.

Because Lena could be there for her, for sex. She could. Again, if Kara wanted it. Or needed it. Or not, if that was what Kara wanted. Whatever this thing she wants is, whatever more Lena has wanted, she can do that, if Kara needs.

But Lena still needs to be there as a friend. She can’t lose Kara, like that.

And a friend would call. And check up.

Because there was something so fragile in Kara’s eye when she left.

Lena didn’t, though.

She was too scared Kara wouldn’t answer.

The night is strangely clear. But the moons disappeared, and the sky reminds her of a lake, reflecting something a little dimmed but just as stunning back at her.

And, strangely, she wonders what her mother is doing. Where she is. What she’s planning. What Lex is doing, in his tiny prison cell, angry and bitter and not the brother she remembers.

Lex is two people to her. The one from before, and the one now.

Grieving someone still alive is the strangest feeling.

And she’s spiralling, she can feel it, into that dark place her thoughts can go. In which she wonders if she’s doomed to be just like them, the Luthor name a brand across her heart. As if she’s bound to repeat their actions, even accidentally.

That portal was all her, after all.

Something bitter is rising up in her throat and she takes in a breath, the air cold and biting in her throat. Maybe she can freeze this feeling, quell it back down to the parts of herself she likes to think aren’t there anymore.

Veronica used to roll her eyes and, what she called, her dramatics. Or should Lena be calling her Roulette?

A stupid name. Though fitting, because you never really knew who you were getting when you spoke to her. Or when she cornered you.

Her door buzzer almost makes her jump. It’s after midnight. On a Saturday, but still.

She leaves the balcony door open, the apartment dark, only a dim lamp in her room throwing light out. The curtains billow at the door and the breeze fills the room. Her apartment building is surrounded by security.

Another feature that was a necessity.

She checks the screen next to the door and bites her lip.

Kara.

For a second, she thinks about not letting her up. Pretending she’s not home.

But who is she kidding, it’s Kara.

She presses the buzzer and the few minutes it takes Kara to to come up seem like hours. Lena has no idea why she’s here. She’s not heard from her all day and picked up her phone so many times to send a message before jamming it back in her pocket she lost count. And all her phone did all day was ping with work emails.

She doesn’t want this, to lose her friendship with Kara. It means too much.

The knock at the door is soft, tentative, and Lena pulls it open before she can stop herself.

They stand and blink at each other. Kara adjusts her glasses and swallows. Lena opens her mouth to say something then closes it.

Because what do you say in this situation?

When Kara sucks in a breath, it’s a little shaky, and for some reason, that makes Lena calmer.

“Hi,” Lena finally offers. Lame and incomplete and nothing she wants to say.

Kara’s smile is delicate. “Hey.”

And the silence falls again and Lena hates it, because they aren’t like this. Maybe the last couple of weeks have been jolty, but that was Kara and her hurting. Not them. Not how they are.

“How are you?” Lena blurts.

Because really, in all of this, she just wants Kara to be okay.

Kara blinks again and then glances around and Lena realises, with a wince, that she’s still in the hallway. She stands aside and Kara steps in and when Lena closes the door, it’s not much better. Neither of them move to sit down anywhere and instead they stand just feet apart and stare at each other.

“I’m sorry.”

Kara’s words are whispered, and Lena, for a second, thinks she’s imagined them.

“Why?”

She has no idea why she’s whispering, either. Kara steps closer, a foot all that’s between them now, filling with space and words unsaid so fast, maybe the air will become solid with it all and it’ll be between them forever. Facts and truths about the man in space kept out by something Lena created, the Luthor name stamped so hard on it it’s impossible to miss. That none of it would ever have happened if not for the Luthors and the issues they gave Lena that lead to her fawning over Rhea like the mother she wishes she had.

“You know why.”

And Lena shakes her head, because she really doesn’t. Is she sorry as in she regrets it? Or as in she shouldn’t have done it, but for reasons Lena can’t understand? Because she left straight after?

“Did I—” Kara is so hesitant. “Did I do something that first night I was drunk?”

“Yes.” The word falls out of Lena too easily. “You uh, kissed me. At your door.”

There’s no reaction on Kara’s face, and Lena doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. She’s out of step, not sure.

“And you still, saw me this week. As a friend?”

That makes Lena pause. “Of course.”

“Oh.”

“Kara.” And her voice is a crack on the word, a stumble, and Kara is staring straight at her, eyes blue even in the dim light, a sky like the night she first kissed Lena.

“What?” she asks, her gaze on Lena’s lips for such a short second Lena isn’t sure it happened.

“What is this?”

Lena needs to know. That’s all. Then she can compartmentalise it as that. Are they still friends? Will they still be friends? Because she can feel where this night is going. She can feel it in the way that Kara’s gaze has fallen to her mouth again, in the way Kara’s tongue has dampened her lips. In the way the air feels charged, not solidified because of those unsaid things. Electric. In the way there’s something needy in that blue.

And if it’s going to happen again, when it happens, in countless seconds, Lena needs to know.

Kara almost looks panicked at the question. She shrugs. “I—I don’t know.” There’s a crease between her eyebrows again. There is a lot, these days. And Lena has the urge, once more, to press her thumb gently to it and smooth it away. “That’s a really bad answer. But I don’t.”

“Are we still friends?”

Lena feels small, to ask it. Like a child in the playground, unsure and scared and worried.

But Kara’s eyes widen, her gaze so firm on Lena’s Lena couldn’t look away for anything. “Yes.” The word is a husk, her voice hoarse. “Yes, I need to be. That’s why I’m sorry. Because I—I want, this. But I also want you to be my friend.”

There’s a note in her voice, like she didn’t know that was what she was going to ask of Lena. And Lena swallows, and nods. Because she can do that. As long as she has Kara as a friend, still. “Of course.”

And that gap is crossed. By Kara, again. The space gone, evaporated, nothing between them. Kara’s hands thread into Lena’s hair and her lips are hot and insistent. Lena meets her, in a kiss that could consume her, and wonders if Kara is going to fall apart right here. Or if she was going to, before she came, and this is what she needs to stop it happening.

They shed their clothes in pieces, lips hungry and barely leaving each other to do so. Kara’s jacket and shirt are in the doorway and they pause for a second, because Lena is amazed at the softness of her skin, the warmth of it. But not for long, because Kara is filled with a need Lena gets lost to. Nails dig into her shoulder blades and Lena’s shirt is suddenly long gone, her bra with it. Her skirt is a puddle somewhere and she all but pushes Kara back onto the bed. She lands with a bounce, her own hands already on the button of her jeans and Lena helps her, tugging them down her legs.

She has the longest legs. She’s toned, everywhere.

And then Lena’s crawling along the length of her, straddling Kara’s hips, and arms are wrapped around her, nails in her skin again and she hisses, but not in pain, in relief at the feeling. Because Kara may need this to, but so does Lena. That spiralling feeling is distant, gone, and instead, Kara is everywhere, at once. Her hands are pulling Lena up, tugging her until she’s straddling Kara’s face, Lena’s nails biting into the headboard to hold herself up and stop herself from screaming out at the touch of Kara’s tongue. Her head falls back, and she wonders if it’s okay to develop an addiction to something when it’s so messed up.

 

* * *

 

Lena’s limbs are aching. Something in her body clock tells her it’s the early hours, awhile until dawn. The warm weight that was draped over her back has gone and Lena can hear Kara stepping lightly around the room. The rustle of cloth and denim.

So she lies there quietly and doesn’t move. When the front door snicks closed, she rolls onto her back and something thick is in her throat. Kara is everywhere in her bed, the smell of her hair in the sheets and the echo of her lips on Lena’s neck. She’s everywhere, but not there at all.

Lena tugs a pillow against her chest and rolls over. When she wakes up hours later, light is streaming through her window and for a second, she’s confused, unsure how she slept so well or where she it. Something rustles when she throws her hand out over the bed and she pulls out a note, hastily written.

 

Lunch on Monday?

 

Only Kara would write a note when she could text. Unless she’s trying to make a point of the lines. No sleepovers. Daylight for friendship.

Or maybe Lena is reading too much into it.

Whatever this is, she can do this, friends with benefits. Maybe it’ll stop this falling feeling in Lena’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr if you want to come yell with me about these two...or at me for the angst: gabsrambles


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lena not knowing Kara is Supergirl is dumb. But, it seems canon she doesn’t (kind of, I still think she does), but I’ve never written it as being a surprise to her, so for the sake of something new to write, Lena doesn’t know.
> 
> Also this was not supposed to become smutty. Then it did. So, fair warning.

 

It’s almost a habit.

Lena read some where that it takes three times to start forming a habit. Or maybe it was three weeks? Either way, the third time seems to cement it. This thing they’re doing that when they’ve caught up for lunch or coffee in between, they’ve pretended they aren’t doing.

Is it even pretending? Or are they just…fine with it?

Because lunch bumbles a little. They somehow meet outside the restaurant at the exact same time and they smile, squinting in the sunlight. At least, Lena does. Kara just seems to glow in it, and Lena’s never noticed, until right then, how the sun seems to make Kara taller. Brighter.

Her smile is radiant, even if it’s painted in nerves, her fingers adjusting her glasses in a gesture so familiar and endearing Lena ends up giving a nervous chuckle. Which makes Kara do the same. And then they make eye contact, and their chuckles burble into laughter.

It feels stolen. Like it doesn’t belong to them. There’s been a heaviness for weeks now. Something that’s like an anchor in Lena’s chest, pulling her down and down, dragging her until she’s bowed. Rhea, her mother, Lex, that portal that she wishes she never figured out. The device that left Kara walking around as if carrying the weight of something too heavy.

But as that sound clashes together between them and their lips curve up in the light, that anchor shifts and she suddenly feels so light. It fades fast, of course, the two of them sodden in everything that’s happened. But as they step inside and make their way to a table, a lightness is in her chest that wasn’t there before. But as that laugh fades, a furrow sits between Kara’s brow, like she’s guilty that she laughed.

With a pang, Lena wonders what else she’s guilty about.

At that thought, she almost falls into her seat and inwardly clambera for that ease of moments ago. Maybe Lena just means guilt for Kara. Nothing but guilt and regret and feeling like she’s cheating on—

They’re back to staring at each other awkwardly.

Chatter is everywhere, the clink of cutlery on dishes, and the rise and fall of voice.

“Any interesting stories?” It’s almost breathy, nervous, the way the Lena asks it but it works because Kara gives a nod.

And Kara actually sucks in a breath and speaks, her hands gesticulating wildly, almost catching a waiter in the stomach who she apologises to with a wince. That furrow goes away. The set of her shoulders is a little less guarded than they have been.

It takes until they’ve almost finished eating, but conversation is almost like it was. And not before the first time the had sex, or the kiss, but before Mon-El, and Kara’s slip downward.

They part with a hug that’s quick, not lingering. Swelling in her stomach is the feeling of missing that, the longer hugs, the ease of friendship without anything else hovering over it, but Lena’s just relieved they still hug at all.

The next day they get coffee, quickly. Kara’s apparently investigating something near L-Corp and Lena gets a message mid-afternoon. They meet across the street in a pretentious cafe that’s all chrome and no colour. It takes everything not to burst into a wide grin at the sight of Kara sitting at the bar in a pastel green cardigan and pants in a bright yellow. The colours shouldn’t work but, as always, Kara just looks…great

She looks great.

What would be great is if Lena didn’t suddenly find it hard to swallow every time Kara is near her.

She’s just so stunning. And what makes it absolutely mind boggling, is she really seems to have no idea.

When Kara turns on her stool, she actually smiles. It’s not one that started from awkward roots like at lunch yesterday, it’s just a soft, reserved smile at the sight of Lena.

Whose stomach flips.

Lena slides next to her and Kara pushes a coffee over. It’s her normal order, tall latte. Exactly how she likes it, and Kara’s eyes are a little soft. Their hands brush as Lena takes it, warmth lingering long after Kara has dropped hers back into her lap, fingers twisting together.

“What story are you chasing?”

And Kara perks up again, a little, about a story she’s on, following a strike for a company that runs several cleaning agencies. Her gaze is back on Lena again and when she’s done explaining she blinks once, slowly. “Are you still being questioned?”

Everything stills for a small moment, this horrible cold bar matching the feeling sliding along Lena’s skin for the shortest of seconds. Because this borders on what they don’t talk about. The things that have happened that have made them all stumble. No, they mentioned it that first night in the bar and now they don’t talk about it.

But maybe, now, they might start to.

If they can, now, Lena wants to ask her if she’s talking to her sister. But that only came up over alcohol, and even if Kara is bringing these topics up, Lena isn’t really sure if Lena can. Kara is so out of step, and Lena doesn’t want to do anything to trip her up more.

And now Kara wants to talk about Lena’s mother.

“Not in the last week. I, uh,” Lena tries to smile there, derision thick in her words, “don’t think they believe I have no idea where she is.”

That furrow is back. “They don’t believe you?” There’s an edge in Kara’s voice Lena hasn’t ever really heard before. Something almost steely. “They think you’d be abetting her?”

There’s heat in Lena’s cheeks then, because Lena really could have done more to stop her mother from leaving. “Well, I think they, like many, have a hard time believing that anyone who’s a Luthor isn’t helping.”

Even Lena wonders, sometimes. Even if it’s an accidental help, is it in her fate to constantly help the Luthor name?

“That’s ridiculous.”

Lena blinks and looks up from the cooling coffee she’s been staring at. “Well, not really, it—”

“No, Lena.” And Kara leans forward, her hand on Lena’s knee and her eyes sincere. “It’s ridiculous. You’ve helped save, well, not even helped, you literally gave us the ability to save the city. Twice now. What more do you have to do?”

Heat is crawling up Lena’s thigh and out of nowhere, she forgets how to swallow, because Kara is just so sincere and earnest. Her eyes glass, transparent in her intention, too blue to really be true.

She’s utterly full of conviction. Belief. In Lena. And Lena has no idea what to do with that.

They part not long later, and Lena goes back to work, her body drawn tight. She feels out of breath, constantly, hand still tingling, knee still doing the same.

An hour later there’s a knock at the door and when Lena calls for the person to come in, absently, standing at her desk and flipping through some briefings, she barely looks up when it opens.

She looks up properly when she sees it’s Kara.

Who closes the door. Then pushes it shut slowly, eyes on Lena’s.

They are just so fucking blue and Lena’s mouth has gone dry.

Because that look? She’s never seen that look in Kara’s eye. It’s almost…predatory.

When she flicks the lock, Lena slowly sinks into her chair.

“Do you have any meetings?” Kara asks.

“Nothing for an hour.”

She was going to get some reports done. Go over the latest figures. Prepare for a board meeting tomorrow.

Suddenly, none of that is important, because Kara is walking towards her. Lena’s always liked the way Kara is a force of nature, ever since she first came into this very office. She’s full of conviction and truth and a need to do the right thing, and sweetness and light and, it turns out, she has a confidence that Lena completely missed noticing. There’s none of the adorable awkwardness as she takes steady steps towards the desk. Or as she trails her fingertips over the smooth desk top, her eyes never leaving Lena’s.

Lena had a dream like this, weeks ago. When she only let herself go there at night, had convinced herself it was never going to happen.

The reality is even better.

There’s no smile on Kara’s lips. But there’s a focus, a burning intensity. Her gaze is scorching and if Lena could just look away she could save herself from being burned.

She does nothing of the sort, of course.

She gives herself over to being consumed.

Kara pauses right in front of her, fingers of her left hand still pressed into the desk, looking down at Lena like some kind of god. It’s embarrassing, but Lena is already breathing too fast, her mouth still dry. She hasn’t let herself wonder when or if it would happen again. It sounded like it would, when Kara told her what she wanted. But they didn’t set up rules or guidelines.

Really, Lena assumed it was going to be a drunk thing, at the times Kara is drunk and sad and messy.

Apparently, she was wrong, and it’s just the latter two.

Which Lena can get on board with, because she’s been too sad and messy herself lately, and all of that is dissipating, fading to nothing under the burn of Kara’s eyes and the heat building between her legs.

Then Kara does something Lena didn’t think she would get to see again so soon.

She slowly drops to her knees, that gaze still agony, something delicious and painful all at once. That heat is back on her knees as Kara rests a hand on each, gliding her palms over Lena’s thighs, skirt pushing up until Lena shifts and it’s pushed out of the way. Lena swallows. Then those hands are back on her knees and inch by inch, Kara pushes her legs apart.

That gaze is gone, then, as Kara dips her head, glasses dropped carelessly to the floor. That fire is being trailed on her skin, instead. Blazing along the inside of her thigh. Fingers chase after Kara’s lips and her tongue, tracing patters, and it takes everything in Lena not to squirm, not to shift, not to thrust into her mouth. Her head almost falls back when Kara’s breath washes over her underwear, hot and almost panting. But she wants to watch this. To see it all. The honey of Kara’s hair, the sweeping of her eyelashes. The way her fingers hook into Lena’s underwear and tug them down, Lena shifting again until she’s bared, hands tugging at the back of her knees so Kara can reach her easily and Kara’s lips are on her flesh.

Her tongue is sweeping, agonisingly slowly, and still Lena won’t close her eyes.

Won’t drop her head back, as much as she wants to, pleasure rolling through her limbs, sitting low in her belly, leaving her giddy.

What she does do, though, is groan.

Not as loud as she needs, this is her office. But it’s something guttural, deep, and Kara takes that to mean more, which it does, and one hand digs into Lena’s hip while the other slides down and then two fingers slip in, not far enough, and Lena rolls her hips.

Kara moves slowly, too slowly, out, and then only just inside.

It’s maddening, with that steady movement of her tongue, and Lena is starting to see stars, pricks of light, her hips aching to thrust. One hand falls to Kara’s shoulder, digs in as Kara does it again again, tongue and fingers in tandem, Lena’s hand twisting to tangle in her hair. Not on the top of her head, Lena still wants to watch. Instead, her palm rests against Kara’s jaw, can feel the way it moves, tendrils of hair wrapped in Lena’s fingers.

And still Kara doesn’t change her speed.

Doesn’t go deeper.

When Lena actually whines, something she’d be embarrassed about if she had any of her senses, she can see the way Kara smiles into her, can feel it and, with absolutely no warning, thrusts into her with two fingers, her eyes opening to look up at Lena from between her legs.

Lena throws her other hand out to grip her desk, her lips parting and finally, she can’t stop herself, her hips thrusting up to meet Kara’s tongue, her fingers. Her back presses into the chair, her heeled toes dig into the carpet and Kara, somehow, holds her down and meets her thrusts at the same time.

And all with the blistering blue of Kara’s gaze on her own. It’s as if Kara doesn’t even notice the grip Lena has on her hair.

And then Kara curls her fingers and Lena comes, shuddering, her throat raw from the sound she won’t let out. And Kara lets her ride it out, movements slowing until her lips are on Lena’s hip bone, dropping gentle kisses.

Lena’s vision is still white when she’s tugging Kara up, tasting herself on her lips. Kara’s breath hitches and, blindly, Lena reaches down and flicks the button on her pants, tugs at them until Kara pulls away with a frustrated grunt and yanks them down her legs, stepping out of them and almost falling over as one foot catches.

It makes Kara laugh. Really laugh, the sound falling out of her like rain in summer, too long missed and with the breaking of a building, solid heat you barely knew was there until the relief of its absence hits you.

Cheeks flushed, eyes bright, Kara is stunning, her hair a mess, stumbling in just her tops, her pants and underwear caught on her foot. So Lena stands and kisses her, hoping to keep the moment there, to keep that fragile thing afloat before Kara can slip away. The kiss is smile-stamped, all curved lips and soft laughing from both of them. A bubble is building in Lena’s chest, something that feels like giddy happiness and her legs are still shaking a little even as she pushes Kara against the desk. Kara half sits, Lena’s shirt held in her fists as if all she wants is to pull Lena even closer.

“I want…”

The words are panted into Lena’s mouth and she wants to ask Kara what? What does she want, because Lena, right then, and almost always, will give her anything she wants.

Her teeth graze over Kara’s neck and when Kara whimpers and turns her head to give Lena more room, she bites down.

Kara moans.

So she bites harder and Kara groans and arches into her, nails biting into the skin of Lena’s stomach when her hands clench.

“What?” Lena asks, her lips hot against Kara’s ear. “What do you want?”

“I—I want…”

And she can’t say, whether she’s too far gone or too shy, Lena doesn’t know.

But then, it can’t be shy, because Kara seems to decide to just show her. She pulls Lena into one more kiss, her teeth nipping at Lena’s bottom lip. The kiss isn’t even over as she starts to turn and for a second, Lena thinks she’s walking away.

She’s not. Rather, Kara’s turning, planting her palms on Lena’s desk so she’s bent over it, her ass pressed against Lena’s front.

For a second, Lena’s too stunned to move, because Kara Danvers just bent herself over Lena’s desk, half naked. Then Kara looks over her shoulder and her lips are still curled up, and Lena’s hands grasp her hips and pull her in tighter.

Lena wants to see her face, properly, but this is fine, too.

More than fine. Lena thinks she’s about explode.

“Please?”

The word hits Lena hard and she grinds against Kara, who pushes back against her.

Lena doesn’t play with her, she doesn’t tease. She drops one hand, the other holding Kara’s hip, and drags her fingertips from the back of Kara’s knee and up her thigh. She uses her foot to nudge Kara’s legs further apart, and Kara obliges instantly, still looking over her shoulder. But when Lena’s fingers run over her wetness, when she pushes one, then instantly another finger inside her from behind, Kara’s head drops down, her fingers white where they press into the desk.

Lena would love for her to be naked. To watch the play of muscles in Kara’s back tense as Lena thrusts into her and Kara pushes back, holds herself up, just barely. The flex of her triceps, her biceps. Watch the sweat shine on her skin.

But there’s something in this, too, Kara naked from the waist down, her cardigan in disarray and hair falling out from where it was half up.

And Lena’s fingers, thrusting.

Kara’s making sounds she’s trying to hold back, but Lena thrusts harder. Kara lets herself fall completely onto the desk, onto her elbows, her head dropping down. Lena, slowly, adds a third fingers and grins when Kara twists her head to bite her own forearm, barely muffling the sound she’s made.

The dream she had has nothing on this. Nothing.

Lena lets go of Kara’s hip and runs her hand down her back, until it’s resting over the back of Kara’s neck and she finds a rhythm that Kara meets. The rocking of Kara’s hips is getting desperate, losing rhythm.

“Kara?” Her voice is hoarse.

Kara twists her head around a little, as if to show she’s listening.

“Touch yourself.”

And she does, as if Lena is in control when really it’s Kara. It’s all Kara, and Lena is just doing whatever she thinks Kara needs. Kara slides one hand down between her legs and the sudden sound she makes as Lena curls her fingers, speeds them up, and her fingers touch herself is one Lena will never forget as long as she lives.

She comes quietly, after that, back arching and pressing back into Lena, chasing her fingers. And Lena lets herself fall over her, chest pressed against her back and lips against Kara’s neck. Lena presses her face into the soft skin, sweaty and overheated. Kara, breathless, hums. Lena doesn’t move her hand, lets it stay and Kara, breathing hard, turns her head a little and huffs a laugh.

Lena doesn’t even move, and Kara doesn’t seem inclined to make her. “What?” she murmurs into the back of Kara’s neck.

“Nothing.” Her voice is raw, and Lena can hear the smile in it. “I needed that today.”

Lena grins and presses it to Kara’s skin, slowly standing up and pulling her hand away. Kara stands up and half sits on the edge of the desk, her pupils blown and cheeks pink. She looks dazed, smiling there, long legs and hair a mess.

She looks beautiful, the light from the window spilling over her.

Lena’s never been happier her windows are tinted.

Tugging her skirt down, Lena grins and steps forward, and Kara tilts her head up to kiss her. It’s slow, gentle, and the taste of herself is still on Kara’s lips.

She pulls back and Kara chases her for a second kiss, lips soft and pliant.

Finally, Lena steps away and Kara manages to stumble into her underwear and pants while Lena finds her own underwear several feet away. Kara gives her a sheepish shrug.

And then Kara’s buttoning her pants. “What?” she asks, because Lena’s probably not hiding her smile.

“You need to fix your hair.”

Kara’s hands jump up and smooth it down and she gives Lena a last look. “So, um. Lunch? Tomorrow, still?”

Lena nods. “Of course.”

Because, of course.

Kara still looks shivery, like her legs haven’t quite recovered, and it takes everything in Lena not to tug her to the sofa to sit for awhile.

Too post coital.

Too…too many things.

Instead, she watches Kara almost make it to the door.

“Kara.”

Kara stops and turns, a look on her face that hasn’t been there the entire time she’s been in Lena’s office. Uncertainty. She bites her lip. “Yeah?”

Lena’s already scooped up the glasses on the floor, and she walks over with them held out. “You don’t want to forget these.”

Eyes wide, Kara nods. “O-of course. Definitely.”

She slips them on and then, with a soft “bye”, she’s gone and Lena’s left trying to focus with the smell of Kara all over her and the memory of her bent over the very desk she’s trying to work at.

The third time, it seems, they’ve left any awkwardness behind.

And Lena conclude it’s now some kind of habit.

 

* * *

 

A warehouse.

On the outskirts of the city.

A buzzing streetlight that won’t turn on, long shadows.

Dark alleys.

Eerie as hell.

Following a dodgy trail of hints and clues that seem to be leading nowhere good.

“Yup,” Alex mutters. “Just a normal weeknight.”

“Are you talking to yourself?” Kara asks.

She’s in full Supergirl outfit, her cape fluttering behind her as they take cautious steps down their entrance point. The rest of the team surround the warehouse, one taking a side entrance, the other another back alley.

Alex is just a little bit proud of herself, because she managed to get Kara to agree before she realised to be in her team.

Forced time together, even if it’s DEO time.

Alex misses her, in a way she can’t put into words. She’s still mad that work got in the way the last weekend, after finally pinning Kara down and getting her to agree to meet at the bar. She’s been slippery since, like smoke. Impossible to grasp. Visible, but never touchable.

“No.” Alex shifts her weapon against her shoulder. She misses her favourite gun. But they have tranquilisers. They need to get these aliens alive. Big orders from Hank. Information is trumping most things at the moment. “You have super hearing. I was talking to you.”

“Liar.”

Alex grins, mostly because Kara just sounded like Kara. Alex side eyes her as they continue down the ally, Alex’s weapon up and Kara’s arms swinging loosely. “Yeah, okay. I was talking to myself.”

“Knew it.”

Alex is still grinning. Because this is bordering on a playful exchange. It’s easy. It’s nice. It’s just like months ago. Years ago. And maybe it can keep going because they still have 100 feet to go to their target.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Alex blurts out.

Or Alex can ruin it rather than keep it going.

Kara freezes and Alex wants to slap herself. She lowers her weapon and turns, squinting a little in the dark. Kara is powerful, here. Her family’s crest blazoned over her chest and her shoulders back. She’s strong and self reliant and unbreakable, really.

But those are the things Supergirl is.

Under it all is Kara, fragile and angry and sad.

And avoiding Alex.

“No—No I haven’t.”

That just makes Alex raise a sassy eyebrow.

Kara puts her hands on her hips, chest broad, as if she thinks that can work on Alex. “Alex. I haven’t.”

“You have, and, and that’s okay.” Apparently they’re doing this here. Which is not what Alex planned. Or talked about with Maggie, about giving Kara time and letting her distance herself if needed and well, Alex isn’t good at any of those things. “It is, really. It’s okay.”

Alex’s heart is going too fast. She can feel it beating against her ribs, like an echoing knock. Because Kara is looking at her with an inscrutable look on her face.

Kara. Inscrutable.

Alex can always figure out what Kara is feeling. Her expressions are as easy to read as anything. Even as Supergirl, Alex can see it. The look in her eye, the set of her jaw.

But right now, she has nothing.

“Alex, are you really doing this now? Here?”

“Well.” Alex straightens. “When else am I supposed to? You won’t take my calls, you-you barely answer my texts, you won’t meet me. You’re never at home when I drop by.”

Now Alex can recognise something. Guilt. There’s guilt in Kara’s face and Alex wants to swallow all of this down. All this worry and hurt that Kara doesn’t need nor deserve, because this isn’t about Alex, right now. It’s about Kara and Mon-El and that other thing that is eating Kara up that Kara won’t talk about, but Alex knows is there.

But she doesn’t swallow it down, she keeps going.

“You’re disappearing Kara, and you won’t talk to me.”

A muscle twitches in Kara’s jaw. “I—”

Please. Alex wants to beg her. Please, say something. Give me something.

Then their comms crackle, asking if they’re in position, and Alex has never hated her job more, because even the guilt fades from Kara’s face and she strides forward, cape billowing and fists clenched.

Ready to fight.

Supergirl is always ready at the moment. It’s Kara Alex wants back.

Sighing, Alex pulls her weapon back up to her shoulder and steps on light, silent feet to catch up to Kara.

The raid is fast, a blur.

There are aliens they manage to knock out. Kara tries to talk one down and when he sends her flying through a pillar instead of cooperating, she comes back out so ready to fight Alex wonders if it was what she was hoping for the entire time. She’s a storm of punches and fury, throwing the guy twice her size up through the ceiling and darting up after him, only to crash back through a moment later, dragging him by the ankle. She dumps him next to stunned bunch Alex has just finished securing in a circle and dusts off her hands.

“Is it all here?” she asks.

Alex turns and calls out, “García? Is it all here?”

“Yep. And there are hostages tied up too.”

Alex and Kara blink at each other.

That is not what is supposed to be there. The huge, terrifying stash of alien weaponry and explosives, yes. The third one they’ve found this week.

Hostages, no.

It take a while to sort out, but finally the three journalists who have only been missing since this afternoon, so no one was even aware, are taken for debriefing. They’re all fine, having been handcuffed most of the time and left in the room with the weapons.

But apparently, they’re all excited because they’ve overheard a lot.

They’re picked up and Alex watches the van drive away with them, squinting.

“What?” Kara asks.

They both sidestep one of the agents carrying out crates to stack in the third van they’ve filled, and they’re only halfway through. It’s a monster stash of weapons and it’s left Alex uneasy. They haven’t been able to pin where these stashes are coming from, only able to follow breadcrumbs. This is the first one they picked up heat signatures with and were able to prepare to get answers.

“Why are they excited? They should be traumatised and scared.”

Kara shrugs and swings her arms, and, one more, it’s so Kara Alex smiles again. When she started to get comfortable at school which took a year, she started to do that in the halls when they talked. A careless motion. Young. Comfortable. “Are you kidding? That’s a journalist’s dream. They’re out unharmed and overheard information from the source. And they’re key witnesses.” Kara almost looks like she’s about to pout. “It’ll be an amazing story.”

“Are you jealous?”

She shrugs, crossing her arms. “It’ll be the story of the week.”

“They’ll have to sign so much paperwork they won’t be able to breath a word.”

“You think journalists will agree to hide this?” Kara snorted. “As if.”

And it’s there again, an easy moment. Lingering between them as they lean against a brick wall and watch the going ons. Alex has so much to do, taking in aliens, one beaten up by Supergirl, and releasing hostages and finding their third stash is going to be so much paperwork she may as well just sleep at the DEO tonight.

But Kara is here, and talking. And almost playful, again.

Playful is the wrong word. Kara lights up when she’s playful. But she’s…loose. As if something has shaken free from the last few weeks and Alex wants to soak it up while she can. Enjoy the moment.

But then Kara swallows, and Alex knows that look. She recognises it on Kara, but she can almost feel it herself. That moment when you’re managing to tread water for a second after too long under, oxygen in your blood, and slip under again as the weight on your foot tugs you back down.

The moment you remember why it was feeling so good to breathe, for just a moment.

Kara’s arms cross and her shoulders hunch.

“Kara.” Alex’s voice is soft, imploring.

Kara won’t even look at her and shakes her head. “I have to go.”

“Kara, wait.”

There’s a crack in her voice, desperation splitting her open and Kara must hear it, because she stops before she takes off, stalled in place. Her eyes seem damp, or maybe that’s Alex’s. She swallows past the lump that’s threatening to stop her speaking completely.

“I love you.” It’s all Alex can say, because she knows Kara needs to disappear again. She’s spending too much time alone. It’s not just Alex. She’s knows from Winn and J’Onn and James. She sees Lena, sometimes.

And that’s it.

Otherwise she’s alone.

And she wants to be.

So Alex will let her, but only if Kara knows that one thing.

“I know.” Kara swallows, and her eyes are definitely shining. “I love you too.”

And then she’s gone, a woosh and whip of air and Alex is alone, with nothing to do but go inside and get these weapons accounted for.

 

* * *

 

Kara only saw Lena in her office that afternoon. Time spent there that brings warmth creeping along Kara’s cheeks. She could barely walk afterwards.

So even though she’s just seen Lena, Kara goes by her apartment anyway. A quick shower, a change of clothes, and she’s knocking on Lena’s door.

None of this is healthy.

Probably.

But Kara’s tired. She’s tired of this grief that’s clawing at her throat, of waking up with the taste of a planet as it breaks apart on her tongue, a dust coating. Of the memory of the dust that Rhea turned to, crumbling and gone. Dead.

Of the injustice she felt in her chest when she learned of her father’s work.

Of the hypocrisy of that, eating away at her.

At the memory of the press of Mon-El’s lips. Of sending him away.

Of being able to press that button, despite what it meant.

Of Kal-El, in awe she could.

She’s tired.

And when she’s with Lena, she doesn’t feel tired. At lunch, she feels some of it creep away and Lena and she just talk.

When it’s really bad, like today after coffee, Lena’s tongue in her mouth and her fingers stop Kara from thinking at all.

Because when she’s with Lena, that’s all she thinks about, and that’s a relief from everything else.

And now she has the hurt in Alex’s eye in her mind, the crack in her voice. The guilt that bubbles up her throat, and Lena’s door is solid under her knuckles.

The door swings open and Kara steps straight into her.

They don’t get to the bed. Instead, they fall on the sofa.

And with every gasp that falls from Lena’s lips, with the heat of her breath on the shell of Kara’s ear, the wet warmth between her legs, with her fingers in Kara’s pants and the rocking of both of their hips, the curling of their fingers, all of it slips away, until it’s just touch and skin and drawing as many orgasms from Lena as she can.

Because it’s addictive, the feel of her.

And when she leaves, Lena doesn’t tug her back, and that’s a relief, with everything else that’s pulling at her, from every direction. It makes her want to go back, later.

Her bed is cold.

The next morning, the story’s already broken. Which of course it is. Kara actually has the urge to send a smug message to Alex, but stops herself and doesn’t know why.

Three different forms of media launch the story, one for each journalist, and the story goes viral. Kidnapped citizens who saw more alien weaponry than they even knew could exist. Who overheard plans for terror attacks.

Social media explodes and any calm that had managed to start after the attack by the Daxamites is renewed ten fold.

Cat sits at her desk, her pen to her lips—which Kara admits, she sometimes gets distracted by—and writes a stunning piece about the way in which we like to paint minorities with one brush, but excuse our own. She calls out the people screaming for the deportation of all aliens by reminding them of the white man that shot up a college a month ago, yet no one is calling out for the deportation of all white men.

The high from that lasts an hour. Her piece is quoted everywhere and she’s invited to chat shows and Kara wonders, for a second, if Cat Grant has managed to do it again, to soothe the raging crowd.

But then a Cadmus video comes on, and the traction seems to be lost.

Terrorists, they say. All aliens are terrorists.

The have footage of Kara as Supergirl, labelling her a menace as she flies into buildings.

Discussion of the destruction planned with the stash of weapons.

She actually hates Lillian so much she almost snaps her pen.

Kara leaves for lunch wondering how it’s only one o’clock.

Lena will have the look in her eye, she knows. The one she gets when Lillian is around. A Cadmus video will be enough to spark that.

There’s something more, to Lillian and Lena than just a difference in politics, that just the alien hatred Lillian spews. Which would be enough. But something in the way Lena hunches, just a little, near Lillian makes Kara want to throw Lillian through a wall.

It’s on the elevator in L-Corp that Kara realises she hasn’t thought of Mon-El since she woke up and her stomach rolls over. She’s swallowing that down when she walks in to Lena’s office. The quiet is damning and she pauses. Lena’s on her sofa, staring at some flowers on the coffee table in front of her. She hasn’t even glanced up.

“Lena?”

She blinks once, slowly, as if in a trance, and smiles, the forest of her eyes on Kara.

“Kara. Hi.”

Somethings wrong. Kara can feel it in the way the hair on her arm stands on end. In the way Lena’s smile is plastered on, as if she needs Kara to believe it to be real like nothing else. In the pattering of Lena’s heart, a galloping, too fast, that makes Kara wonder how she thought it was quiet a second ago.

Panic.

The sound of Lena when she’s panicked.

“What’s wrong?”

Lena blinks again, surprised. She looks back to the flowers. “They arrived this morning.”

Someone sent her flowers? Kara’s not jealous. She’s not. But she’s something, some emotion twisting her stomach briefly. It’s only there a second, though, because worry takes away from it all. Flowers shouldn’t cause panic.

“Who are they from?”

“They’re carnations.” Lena doesn’t answer, just stares at them. “And amaryllis.” She swallows, and then raises a glass to her lip Kara didn’t even notice. After she sips, she lowers it back down and the clinking of ice as she trembles almost deafens Kara, so focused was she on Lena and not thinking of her powers. “And a cardinal flower. All, of course, mean pride, or, rather, being proud of the recipient.”

Kara isn’t sure how that’s an of course for flower meanings. She has no idea what different flowers mean. But then she remembers the flowers that filled her office, and wonders if Lena chose them for their meaning, and not just their smell and look.

Lena’s face is blank, eyes on the flowers, fingers white where she grips the glass. Kara’s worried it’s going to shatter.

“Last, but not least.” Lena’s voice is hollow. She looks up, and her eyes are like a whip Kara can’t look away from. “Chrysanthemums, for familial bonds.”

Kara’s blood runs cold, at that.

“It would seem, Kara, that Lex is happy with what I did with his device.” They stare at each other, and Lena’s heart races away, a beat so fast it’s hard to follow. “I might need you to contact Supergirl after lunch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Internet is the provider for my flower knowledge.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could tell you all how much I love your comments. I never have a chance to reply to them all but just know each one is a little nugget of joy that motivates me. You're all awesome.  
> Hope you continue to enjoy :)
> 
> Buckle in, folks. Someone, and she knows who she is, gave me an idea to make this even angstier. Not yet, though. Same level of angst, for now. Actually, even slightly less, this chapter. I'm gonna say a solid 5/10 really, which for me is not so bad?

 

Kara’s boots touch down gently, but she makes sure to make a little noise. Something soft, rubber heals grating on the cement.

Her heart is going a million miles an hour, it’s as if it’s in her throat, anxiety crawling along her limbs.

It’s the first time she’s seeing Lena since everything happened, as Supergirl.

Since Rhea.

Since Mon-El.

Since Lena looked at her with fire in her eyes when she’d thought Supergirl had hidden the truth of Mon-El’s origins from Kara. There’d been something Kara recognised. Something she sees when Alex steps to stand next to her, a blinding need to protect someone she cares about.

That was what was in Lena’s eyes.

It’s something Kara can’t think about. Shouldn’t think about.

The evening air is cool on her flushed cheeks, a breeze playing around her skirt, fluttering her cape. The sun has just set, the sky the milky blue it is before darkness really claims it. Across the city, lights have turned on, dim in this strange twilight of in between.

Kara feels like that.

Caught between moments.

This will be the first time she sees Lena since all of that, as Supergirl, but also since she started losing herself in Lena’s skin as Kara Danvers.

Kara tilts her chin up, tightens her shoulders, the crest on her chest a barrier. Something to hide behind. A hope that people who know her are too blind by it to look too closely at her face.

Being Supergirl around Lena was difficult before, something that felt like tripping. As their friendship grew, Kara hated the lie. Especially to someone like Lena, a warrior in the world, yet something fragile behind closed doors. Someone who’s been betrayed and disappointed again and again. It was bad enough then. But now? They’re sleeping together, sure. But they’re inching closer every day, over lunches and coffees, after the laughter that Lena’s slowly becoming able to draw out of Kara. Slow smiles that feel delicate on Kara’s lips, but are there regardless of their ability to shatter.

A friendship, that means more to Kara every day.

It all feels so much worse. But now she has no idea how to tell her that Kara Danvers and Supergirl are one and the same. Or, rather, are two parts of Kara Zor-el. Two parts of several, it feels at times, those pieces melding and blending and sometimes rejecting each other so forcefully Kara is left uncertain, all the time.

And Lena looks at Kara like Kara is something, all on her own, and she doesn’t want to break that.

Doesn’t want to see betrayal edge her eye and curl her lips down.

Kara never wants to betray Lena Luthor.

Lena walks out with a glass of something in her hand. And Kara forgets, for a split second, that she’s Supergirl and she offers a smile.

Something like puzzlement flits over Lena’s lips, so Kara smiles like Supergirl, the sonic beam, and Lena nods.

“Supergirl.”

She looks less open then she did before, when her eyes stared at flowers that made Kara’s skin crawl. When she let Kara sit on her sofa, hesitantly, and wrap her arms around her. When Lena, for a second, tensed, before dropping her head on Kara’s shoulder.

Kara had no idea she’d be able to separate two things like she is. The part that craves the heat of Lena, the gasp, the way she gives herself over to making Kara come, the utter focus of the moment. And the friendship.

Lena’s staring at her.

“Kara Danvers told me you wanted to speak with me?”

The glass is held close to her chest, like Lena needs her own barrier. There’s something in her eye, something mistrustful.

“I do. Did she say why?”

Kara shakes her head. “No.”

Lena sighs and walks over to the balcony, leaning against the rail and staring out at the city, glass still held up. Night is truly creeping over the sky now, lights burning brighter as they find their place, darkness drawing them out. She’s in profile, and Kara’s gaze sweeps over it, the carve of her jaw, the cheekbones she noticed the first day she stood in the office next to Kal-El. She stood there and felt something burble in her chest as Lena smiled at her over the desk, her gaze strong and a cockiness to her words. Kara actually giggled at something she said, and she felt like she first had with James. Light. Giddy. Not sure how to function around someone that attractive and enigmatic.

And then everything got complicated and so much has happened and now here they are, the taste of that memory on Kara’s lips.

She thought, back then, that she needed to figure herself out when she broke up with James. Then ignored the flutter in her stomach from Lena.

What had happened?

She feels safer, here, as everything gets darker. Shrouded, so Lena can’t really notice her. Everything feels like a lie, and she craves the air above, to be flying, where none of this is happening. Moving through space like it’s hers alone, where everything is that little less confusing.

“Lex has sent me a message.”

Lena’s gaze is still on the city, so Kara doesn’t bother twisting her face to look surprised. “Has he done that before?”

The sip Lena takes looks like it’s done to be fortifying. Her lips shine with it and Kara is struck, suddenly, with the urge to suck that shine away. “Not for a long time. I have no idea how he manages to. He’s not supposed to be contactable.”

He isn’t. Maybe Kara should contact Kal-El. She considers the thought, but dismisses it.

“What was the message?”

“Something completely clear. To me. And probably unclear to anyone else.” Kara doesn’t know where Lena is going with this. “He sent flowers.”

“And you’re sure they were from him?”

“Yes. There was a typed letter.”

“Could someone have faked it?”

“If they did, they sent a very spot on message, for someone that’s not Lex.”

“And what was the message?” That’s twice she’s asked.

Lena sighs and turns, something blazing in her eyes, even in the dark. She presses back against the rail and stares straight at Kara. “The meaning of the flowers were clear. A mixture of pride for the recipient, pride in family, and strength of family.”

“He’s proud of what you did, fixing his device?”

“And causing the death of many aliens. Yes. I assume.”

“Do you think it’s more than just trying to mess with your head?” Kara wants to step forward, to rest a hesitant hand on Lena’s arm.

Her jaw tightens at Kara’s words. “Yes. He likes to play mind games. But he—he also wouldn’t do this without a reason. Considering the last contact I had from him was him sending people to kill me, this means something. I think—I think he’s planning something.”

Just what they need. Lex scheming on top of Cadmus. Or with Cadmus? How could he be communicating with them? It’s impossible. They must be working separately.

Which is just great. Two groups.

“So he’s scheming from where he is, and Cadmus is also scheming.”

“It looks like.”

“Why tell me?” Kara eyes her. “Why not go to the police?”

“I did. After Kara left.” It’s always so weird to hear someone talk about Kara her to Supergirl her. Always. But with Lena, it leaves behind a twinge of guilt. “I called them and let them know. They said it’s impossible, as he’s being constantly monitored.”

Kara actually rolls her eyes. “Of course they did. I’ll contact the DEO and let them know. They can do their own investigation.”

“Thank you.” Lena tapped her nail against the glass, the ringing of it loud in Kara’s ears for a second, it so unexpected. It’s almost musical.

“Supergirl?”

Kara blinks. “Yes?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“What for?”

She’s so sincere there, in the dim light of buildings. “I all but accused you of hiding information from Kara Danvers.”

Kara swallows. “It was a fair assumption. And I may have been keeping it, for all you knew.” Because she keeps so many secrets. “Being Supergirl means, sometimes, not doing what I want to do. It means having to step away from those relationships and doing what I think is best.”

Because those are the decision Kara has to make. To send her boyfriend away, to sacrifice something that was making her happy. Lie to her friends. She sacrifices everything, it feels.

But there’s something hard about Lena’s expression, her jaw clenched.

“Your duties as Supergirl don’t negate your duties as a friend.”

Those words are almost like a slap, the sound that never happens almost rings out in the air.

“I’m always having to make decisions that conflict with what I want. Trust me on that, Ms. Luthor.”

And Lena seems to hear something in that, because she softens, just a little.

“Lena, please.”

Kara prefers using last names, politeness, with people who know her as Kara. Like with Cat. It helps, to keep any of Kara out of her tone, to lace is it with Supergirl, with the person she’s supposed to represent. To stop any latent Kara from leaking in.

“Lena.”

Lena blinks and studies her again, and Kara needs to go. Because this is too strange, too weird, and all of it just feels like a deception.

“Is there anything else?”

Lena shakes her head. “No. I appreciate you coming.”

“Anytime.”

“A promise like that?” Lena cocks her head and something flips in Kara’s stomach. “From the city’s protector herself?”

A smile is plastered on Kara’s face, and she need to go. “Of course.”

“Good night, Supergirl.”

And Kara nods to her and takes off, the wind whipping at her hair and trying to ignore the way she hears Lena’s heartbeat pick up.

 

* * *

 

“Alex, you’re sulking.”

“I’m not sulking.” Alex, who is all hunched shoulders and pouty lips, definitely sulking on the couch, glares at Maggie, who’s in the kitchen opening their beers. The fizz of the bottle sounds like relief should after a long work day. Things are getting hectic, tension is building. People are calling for detainment of all aliens. The story about the weapon stashes has sent everyone into an uproar. Alex has been chasing leads all over the city of more stashes, more armed to the teeth groups and Maggie feels like she hasn’t sat down in three weeks.

“Danvers…”

“I haven’t spoken to her in two days!”

There it is. Alex’s cheeks are slashed with an angry red, and Maggie grabs the two beer bottles and walks around the counter to flop next to Alex on the sofa. It takes all of a second to pass for her to grab her beer and lift her legs up, laying them over Maggie’s lap as she twists to face her. Maggie just raises her eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

She doesn’t stop.

Alex huffs. “Maggie…”

“Alex.”

“I’ve tried to be patient.”

“Not only did you bring everything up just days after we talked about you giving her space, you did it during a mission.”

Alex takes a long sip of her beer. Maggie tries to remind herself that Alex is a fixer. Someone who watches things fall apart around her and is already thinking of ways to build it all back up. She’s all about solutions and fast fixes. The classic oldest child who had too much responsibility given to her.

And Kara is that one thing that Alex can never give space too even when she accepts she needs to. She’s trying. The last two days have killed her. Maggie’s watched her throw herself into work even more so than usual, watched her pick up her phone every few minutes and glance at the screen.

Had to listen to a rant about how Supergirl swept in, beat up some aliens just last night, then swept away with barely an acknowledgement of Alex.

And Maggie has no idea what to do. Because Kara’s still not someone Maggie knows too well, or understands. She’s layers upon layers of a person, things dug so deep Kara probably doesn’t know how far down they go, how many parts of herself fold in on herself. The last girl of Krypton, abandoned by her cousin to strangers, the sole carrier of memories of a planet and culture and life unknown here. And a superhero, one who fights to be respected and out of her cousin’s shadow. And a woman. And a person. And someone who chose to send her lover away to save the world.

On top of everything else.

And the only thing in there that Maggie can begin to understand is the loss of a love.

Because the idea of losing Alex makes it feel like all the air is sucked out of the room, and she doesn’t have the rest of that all piled on, too.

“Okay. I know. I’m trying, though.” Alex’s thumb flicks over the label on her beer and Maggie traces her fingers up and down her shin, featherlight and hoping it gives some kind of comfort.

“I know you are.”

“What if she never opens up?”

Maggie presses her lips together and tries to make it a smile. With a tilt of her head, she looks Alex right in the eye. “Then you let her be. However she needs to.” Alex looks a little crestfallen. “But, come on. It’s you and Kara. She will eventually. I just think she’s going through something we can’t understand.”

“How am I supposed to understand if she won’t talk to me?”

“Maybe she doesn’t know how?”

Because Maggie gets that. When the words are all heavy and trapped in your throat and you’re not sure how to get them out.

Alex sighs. “Yeah.”

And then there’s a knock at the door.

They both blink at each other for a second.

When Maggie opens the door, Alex still on the couch, Kara’s standing there. She offers Maggie a tight smile and Maggie smiles back at her, trying not to let her surprise shine through. “Kara. Hi.”

There’s always something about Kara that looks just a little uncomfortable to Maggie. Like she’s slipped into a skin that doesn’t fit quite right. Like it’s a bit too tight, restrictive. Maybe it’s life that are those things to Kara.

But she wouldn’t say that as Supergirl, Kara looks more comfortable.

It makes Maggie wonder if Kara ever really feels like she fits, or if she’s constantly walking through life adjusting herself, trying to figure out how to just be.

Kara’s hands go to her glasses and her hair has that slightly windswept look.

“Hi, Maggie.” Her voice is soft, unsure. She swallows and her hand hovers, unsure what to do with itself now she’s already played with the frames that are heavy on her face. “Is Alex here?”

Maggie could kiss her. Because Alex needs Kara to show up so badly, and here she is. Whatever the reason, she’s here.

Maggie’s smile turns bigger, more genuine. “She is.”

Stepping back, Maggie invites her in with a wave of her arm. Kara’s been to her apartment once before, with Mon-El, and Maggie can’t help but wonder if that’s what she’s thinking as she steps inside, her gaze roaming over the room. It settles on Alex and there’s a strange moment in which Kara looks somehow more comfortable at the sight of her sister, yet also ready to turn and run. A conflict of emotion, her face frozen. Like the tide at it’s peak, balanced at the moment it can’t creep forward anymore and is just about to fall back.

“Hi.”

Alex has sat, her beer in her hand and her eyes wide. The hope in them makes Maggie want to look away, the force of it is so strong. “Hi, Kara.”

“How’s the house hunt going?” Kara asks. She’s still hovering in the middle of the room, Maggie by the door and Alex on the sofa.

“Good, we—we got a place, not far from yours, actually. We move in this weekend.”

“Oh.” There’s a silence then, and it’s clear Kara’s thinking on something. “Can I help you move?”

Alex nods, slowly. “That would be great. We’ll supply potstickers. As a thank you.”

Alex is answering, but she’s still frozen. So Maggie steps forward. “Do you want a drink?”

“Um, no. Thanks.” But Kara finally sits, on a chair near Alex. Perched on the edge, as if ready to flee.

But she’s here.

After weeks.

Alex shuffles closer, her entire body turning towards Kara. Their knees almost touch and Kara doesn’t pull away. Maggie slowly backs into the kitchen and leans her elbows on the counter, eyes on the two sisters trying desperately to reconnect.

Or, she hopes Kara wants to reconnect.

She offered to help on the weekend. That’s huge.

“I have something I need your help with.”

And Maggie watches Kara talk more than she has in weeks. Something about flowers and Lex Luthor, infamous in his own right, and Lena.

And watches Lena’s name fall from Kara’s lips with an ease nothing else has in too long. She cocks her head and watches their conversation, something about the DEO using channels to check if Lex Luthor is in contact with anyone. If it’s connected to Cadmus. Maggie’s department apparently pushed Lena’s concerns aside and she makes a mental note to do some investigating of her own.

But mostly, none of that registers.

What does register is the way Kara seems worked up. Engaged. There’s worry in her eyes, and it’s all about Lena Luthor.

Which is…interesting.

She seems less concerned about Lex and what he could be plotting, about any link to Cadmus, and more concerned that Lena is caught in the crossfire.

The two of them are friends. Close friends. That was obvious when it was Mon-El and Lena missing. Obvious in the way Lena is the only person Kara has been seeing recently.

But it’s…interesting.

Maggie pushes the thought away for later.

Because that would just be crazy.

As soon as she’s finished explaining, and Alex has reassured her they’ll look into it, silence falls.

It’s thick and obvious and horrible. When Maggie first saw the two of them together, they were all silent conversations with looks and nothing more, and Kara was this bright human who smiled all the time and was a little goofy and ate a lot. They shared shoulder nudges and space like they’d lived in each other’s forever.

Not, Kara is a broken Kryptonian and Maggie understands nothing.

Kara stands. “I should go.”

Alex stands too and Maggie aches with how much she can see Alex wants to reach out and touch her, to pull her back.

“Are you sure? You could stay for a movie? Or, or some desert?”

Kara shakes her head. “I wanted to take another lap as Supergirl before bed and we all have work tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at the DEO tomorrow?”

Kara nods, already walking towards the door. “Yeah. And this weekend?”

Alex nods, so enthusiastically that ache gets stronger. “Definitely. Thank you.”

And Kara pauses, her hand on that door, like being thanks for something that should have been natural for her to do trips her up. She looks at Alex for a long second. “Of course.”

And then she’s opening the door, saying bye and she’s gone even as Maggie’s raises her hand to wave.

Alex is alone in the living room, her arms crossed over her chest.

“You okay?”

Alex nods. “Yeah.” And she’s smiling, a little. “That was something, at least.”

“Yeah.” Maggie smiles back at her. “That was something.”

 

* * *

 

Lena’s on her balcony again, but this time, she’s waiting.

Her phone beeped ten minutes ago, a message from Kara lighting up the screen.

And Lena, of course, answered. Because of course she did. And right now, she doesn’t want to be alone. With the smell of those flowers still on her skin and in her hair, even after she threw them out. Even after the shower she took, the body wash, the shampoo. She feel it in her pores.

She feels covered in Lex, and that makes her skin crawl.

He’s plotting. Her mother is plotting.

And nothing good is going to come from any of it, and Lena is getting dragged into it.

Again.

Like she always has.

And Supergirl is involved.

Because she has to be. Because what fight between a Luthor and the world hasn’t really come down to a Luthor versus the Super?

It was strange, to be on that dark balcony with Supergirl. Strange at the way everything about it felt familiar in a way it hasn’t before. And the way something coiled in Lena’s belly, a protectiveness at the idea that Kara could be pushed aside for Supergirl’s morals and ambitions. And Supergirl’s face when Lena pointed this out, her entire body deflated right there in front of Lena as she sunk into herself and she didn’t look like a hero, but a woman. A person. Something flickered in Lena, some warning at the sight of it, but then Supergirl stood straight again, colour striped in her cheeks and the blue of her eyes hard and soft all at the same time, and told her that her decisions often conflicted with what she wanted.

For the first time, Lena really thinks about the fact that it was Supergirl that pushed the button that sent Kara’s boyfriend away. Lena made it possible, but Supergirl carried it out.

This is all such a mess.

And shit, has it all become messier because Lena and Kara are sleeping together in some strange attempt to make themselves feel better.

And it works, most of the time.

Is that healthy?

Lena struggles to care. Especially because it’s so much of what she wanted before, so close to the things she so rarely let herself think about. Maybe it can be close enough, for her.

The door buzzes and when she lets Kara in, they don’t fall on each other immediately. Rather, Kara looks at her and asks, “Are you okay?”

They don’t usually do that. The sex is sex and starts and ends that way, and this is clearly what tonight is supposed to be. It’s after twelve am. It’s been a hard day. Kara sent a short text asking if she was free.

But Lena finds herself answering, “No.”

She meant to say yes.

Kara closes the door behind her and they stand in the dimly lit room. Lena misses the brilliant light from the office, where she could see everything. Each detail. She makes a mental note to flick the light on in her room when they eventually stumble there.

“Lex?”

Lena’s going to need a drink if they’re talking about this. Kara follows her to the kitchen and leans against the counter while Lena fills a glass with ice and bourbon. She waves away the offer of one. And doesn’t speak. Just watches Lena measure out her drink carefully, her gaze sweeping over Lena’s throat as she takes a sip.

“Yes,” she says finally. “Lex.”

Kara blinks, slowly. “We’ll figure it out.”

We. And Lena stares at her, and Kara doesn’t seem to find anything strange in that. We. Like they’re a team. Friends who sleep together and help each other. Lena’s head is suddenly a mess and she takes a long swallow.

“You know,” Lena finally says. “Lex wasn’t always like this.”

“Homicidal?”

Grim, Lena smiles. “Yes. Homicidal. And…horrible. And bigoted.” Kara just watches her, so Lena continues. The thoughts are there, so she may as well verbalise them. She’s not used to it though. She’s used to clutching her cards close to her chest, not letting anyone close enough to see. That makes you vulnerable, and she hates that this is who she is right now. “He was sweet. When I first arrived, the house was cold. And Lillian was cold. But Lex was warm. And nice. I told you he was the only one to make me feel welcome. He was the only one to make me feel anything. He’d talk to me, for hours. Not like a child, but like an equal. It took years for things to start to change. He got distant, strange. His ideas didn’t match the ones I remembered him saying. And, one day, I came back from school and it was if he was a totally different person.”

“I’m sorry.”

No one has ever said that, about Lex, but Kara is staring at her, sincerity laced in the ice blue of her eyes and Lena’s throat tightens. “Why?”

Kara shrugs. “He was a brother to you. And now that brother is gone. I know, a little, about that.”

“You do?”

They’re whispering, as if sharing secrets they want to keep close but can’t.

“I told you my parents died?”

Lena nods. She’s never offered more information, and Lena knows what topics you don’t push. The glass is cold in her fingers, and she puts it down on the counter and steps forward. It’s a small step, but enough to bring them close together, a foot between their bodies. Kara’s throwing off heat and Lena has the urge to melt into it, to throw herself into it. To disappear into Kara and just stay there. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Her voice is so low that Lena has to concentrate on every word, her eyes on her lips, trying to follow it all. “And I was lucky. My adoptive family is great. Alex is…everything, to me. But I had my parents on a pedestal for so long, that when I started to learn that they were, well, human—” there’s something ironic in the curve of her lips as she says it “—I felt betrayed by it. It was like grieving, all over again.”

A shadow is in Kara’s eye Lena has never seen before. A haunting, something that runs deep, deeper than what she’s saying, deeper than Lena can probably grasp. Her voice is what agony must sound like, and Lean reaches out her hand, her fingertips running down Kara’s arm until their fingers entwine between them.

“I feel like I’m grieving Lex, and he’s alive.”

“You are.”

Kara’s words are solid, they hang in the air as if suspended. And Lena pushes forwards, then hovers, her lips millimetres from Kara’s.

“Is this what you want?” she asks.

Kara nods, her nose grazing Lena’s cheek. Her breath is warm, sweet, washing over Lena’s lips and her fingers run over Lena’s neck, her thumb on Lena’s jaw.

“Yes.”

And the kiss is soft. Not a thing of desperation, but comfort. Something aching in the touch of their lips, the graze of Kara’s tongue over her own. They take steps to the bedroom, clothes left behind them again, tripping as they kick of shoes.

The pattern is easy to fall into.

Kara’s skin is smooth. Lena loses herself to the way she trembles, the shivers down her spine. To the soft skin on Kara’s inner thigh. The taste of her, the rhythm Kara likes. The way Kara likes it a little rough, towards the end, to push her over the edge. The way Lena’s learning to keep her from falling over it, hovering Kara there, her fingers digging into the mattress and the cry caught in her throat.

Something in her isn’t satisfied with the first one, so she makes Kara do it again. And again. Then Kara tugs her up and returns the favour, all rocking hips and biting that starts gentle but doesn’t end that way. Lena forgets what it’s like to feel her toes and the sun is creeping into the sky by the time they stop.

She can’t remember the last time she had sex until dawn, but that need is still in her limbs. so when Kara’s trying to leave, Lena pins her to the door and falls to her knees as Kara’s fingers bury in her hair.

She’s sticky, and sweaty, and exhaustion is behind her eyes by the time Kara does go.

There’s no time to sleep, her alarm will go off in thirty minutes, so instead she sits on her balcony, the sky washed with pink daylight, and sips a coffee.

She smells like Kara. Again.

And suddenly, everything else feels like it can’t touch her right then.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow this is late. But it's still going! I have plans! So, the angst level is all ramped up here. Sorry this chapter is short, but it kinda worked that way. There's some heavier, plot stuff to come. Hope you enjoy!  
> And, seriously, thank you for all your amazing comments. I read every single one and do happy dances. I love them.

Lena, it seems, has slowly, yet incredibly steadily, fallen in love with Kara Danvers.

She doesn’t realise immediately.

It’s taken weeks, she thinks.

She knew before that Kara Danvers was not a friend, to her. The moment she walked through the door, sweet and a little bit cocky and flashing that smile, Lena had felt a throb of attraction, low in her belly. And as they got to know each other, it never waned, only intensified. Bit by bit. A crush, she brushed it off as.

An infatuation.

An interest.

Sex.

Then she blamed the sex and friendship for being confused.

But now, sitting in bed and Kara not leaving immediately like she usually does, her soft laughter smattering throughout the room like welcomed rain on a Sunday morning, Lena’s grin stretches her cheeks and warmth settles over her and she just knows.

She’s in love with Kara Danvers.

Who’s in love with Mike, and broken hearted, and specifically said she wants friendship with Lena. Friends. And sex.

“Was that five?” Kara’s words are almost breathless, the light from the curtains washing over her face. She rolls onto her side, propping her head in her hand and that warmth is a blanket, wrapped around Lena as she smiles back at Kara. She’s lovely. And Lena’s in love. And that is not okay. “Or six?”

Kara’s not leaving and this feeling is bounding through Lena’s bloodstream. Pounding against her vessels, sinking into the fibres of her muscles, tangible in her marrow. It’s been weeks and weeks of this, of sex separated from everything else. But now, suddenly, it doesn’t feel separated. And Lena wonders if it hasn’t since the night she spoke about Lex. If she’s honest with herself, it’s never been.

She needs to say something, and not the words that are tripping on her tongue, that’s boiling in her throat.

“I think seven.” Lena’s voice is edged with something hoarse. That seventh time left her throat aching and her toes curled. Kara’s leg slides between her own and Lena wonders if they’re going for eight, and that’s why Kara’s still there.

Lena can do eight.

She could do ten.

But she needs to smother this fluttering feeling down. This horror edging through her system. She can’t feel like this.

Because Kara is soft edges and smiling lips and flushed cheeks, and Lena loves her.

The word won’t stop playing in her head.

That leg shifts against her own and there’s not even a foot of space between them. But still Kara doesn’t push for more, but doesn’t leave, either.

She never does that.

“Seven is a lot.”

Lena smirks. “Is it?”

The curve to Kara’s smile is almost exasperated, affectionally so, but mostly relaxed. “Show off.”

She’s teasing, and lit up, and looks like she’s all but melted into Lena’s sheets.

Parts of Kara have been seeping through the cracks that have opened up since Rhea and Mike and everything. But never so much as this. There’s no darkness lingering in her eye, no scratch to her voice. Her fingers trail down Lena’s shoulder, raising goosebumps in their wake as their fall from her arm and run to her ribs and against her bare hip. Kara’s eyes follow the motion, as if enraptured. And for the smallest of seconds, Lena thinks about telling her. Of letting those words whisper out. A confession. An apology?

An _I’m sorry I love you_.

But Lena can’t do it.

Because Kara is still mostly broken. And that won’t go anywhere good.

Kara deserves more, than to be loved by the person that’s been the catalyst of so much of her unhappiness.

Lena’s not selfish enough, or perhaps too selfish, to say something that will make Kara pull back from something that’s making her smile, that will make that smile fall and fade. That will drag that darkness back out. So Lena swallows heavily, the motion doing nothing to press those words down, instead leaving them coated in her mouth, and nods.

“You gave me something to show off about.”

Kara actually gives a soft laugh, something that borders on a giggle. Her fingers are splayed over Lena’s hip, and Lena is just in awe that Kara’s still there. She hasn’t gone. Hasn’t slipped out of warm sheets, skin still slick with sweat, with Lena, with the last few hours, thrown a smile over her face, and left.

Kara lets her head fall onto the pillow, her arm falling against the bed, and Lena looks down at her, hair around her head, messed from Lena’s fingers. It’s normally shining, thick and lustrous. Now it’s lank, and they both need a shower, but Lena wouldn’t get up from this for anything.

“Well,” Kara says, her fingers warm on Lena’s hip and her eyes soft, a blue to fall into, a blue made for poetry and words that Lena so desperately wants to say. They feel like they’re going to rend out of her mouth, to pull her apart. How did she think she was beyond this? “I’d say that was more an _us_ thing.”

And that does it.

The word _us_ , even as it slips out of her own mouth, makes Kara tense. It’s subtle, at first. A slow inkling in her eye, a knowledge that she just said that. That she’s still lying there, in the bed that’s been mussed for hours, that they’ve lain in between touches and spoken soft words. There was a moment, between times four and five, that Kara’s arm had sat around Lena’s waist, her back pulled tight into Kara’s front as they’d murmured about their days.

They’d been so good at the just sex part.

So good.

Even as they saw each other almost every day for coffee, for lunch.

And now, suddenly, that latest revelation burning at Lena’s lips, aching to be said, it’s starting to disintegrate.

That look in her eye deepens and Kara’s hand pulls away, slowly, her fingers trailing over skin that betrays Lena, tingles racing along it. The openness shutters, the smile stuttering to nothing.

“It’s, uh, getting late.”

And Kara sits up, her legs swivelling around, her toned back all Lena can see, stiff and no longer pliant as it had been just moments ago. Skin that Lena had trailed her nails down, her lips, her teeth. Skin she’s gotten to see ripple, the muscles reacting to her movement, just as she wished she could that first time Kara was bent over her desk.

“Kara…”

Lena doesn’t know what to add to that. Kara’s back goes even stiffer. If Lena pleads for her to stay, or just asks, that fragility in Kara’s shoulders will shatter and she’ll leave. If she simply asks her to stay, still Kara will leave.

If Lena does nothing and Kara just leaves, there’s a chance she’ll come back if Lena hasn’t scared her more that that _us_ did.

So she lies in the bed and watches Kara get dressed. All fluid motions, no clumsiness. Tugs on her underwear that Lena had quite happily slid down her legs hours ago. Her pants are on next, then her shirt. Kara pauses in the doorway, almost hovers. For a second, a horrible feeling akin to hope blooms in Lena’s chest, but then Kara goes, not uttering another word.

The door closing is an echo in the apartment and for reasons she can’t name, Lena is cold, all over, where not long ago only warmth lay.

 

* * *

 

Once Kara’s at the apartment, packing takes no time at all. Maggie’s packing her own and later, Alex and she will meet at the new place to start unpacking. A nesting time. Something to look forward to.

But for now, Kara’s shown up to help, as she promised, and Alex tries to start conversation, but it’s tripping and doesn’t pick up easily. Disappointment is heavy in her chest at Kara’s odd silence, but Alex pushes past it. Takes a breath.

Takes a minute.

And just works in the same room as her sister.

She won’t deny that she hoped that after the offer to help the other day, things might be a little better. But a least Kara is here.

And that’s more than she can say for last month or two.

“How was your morning?”

Kara pauses with the kitchenware she’s speed wrapping in tissue paper. It’s a split second, but Alex catches it.

“Good.”

“What did you get up to?”

Alex can all but hear Maggie telling her to hold back a little.

Not Alex’s style.

“I saw Lena.”

Is it Alex’s imagination? Or is Kara slightly pink at that? She always is weird about talking about Lena, and Alex has the sneaking suspicion it’s because she sees Lena all the time while barely seeing Alex, and doesn’t want to admit to it.

But Alex knows.

And while a thick jealousy rears up at times, at not being the person her sister is seeking for comfort for this dense cloud she’s battling, mostly Alex is relieved Kara’s not isolating herself completely.

“That’s nice.” And it is. Because she just doesn’t want Kara to disappear completely. Anything but that. And this last two weeks, especially, fear has clawed up Alex’s throat because she has actually been worried that’s exactly what’s going to happen. “Maybe we could all hang out next week? I’d say tomorrow, but Maggie and I will be getting all settled. Maybe we could all, I don’t know, get to know each other a little more.”

Kara does pause this time, her head slightly cocked as she looks at Alex. Her hands are frozen mid-air, paper-wrapped plate in hand. The piercing blue of her eyes makes Alex stop dead. It’s been so long since Kara has really looked her in the eye with something like an honest look. She wants to pause the moment, to really sink into it, to relish something that feels like Kara is really connected to her.

“O—okay.”

And that’s all they really talk about that. The moving van picks up the boxes, and Alex pauses in her living room, Kara shoulder to shoulder with her and suddenly a little soft.

“Big changes,” Kara says.

Alex turns her head and looks at her sister, her eyes sweeping the empty space bar the furniture that had come with the house. “Big changes,” she echoes.

Kara turns her head and again, Alex feels punched with the eye contact. She doesn’t know if that hit feeling is coming from a place that’s Kara coming back from wherever she’s been, or what. But she wishes she’d stay. Always.

Kara swallows, and that crease appears between her eyebrows that shows up when she’s contemplating something, when she’s really been sitting on it. She opens her mouth, then closes it again, and Alex just wants to grab her, to shake her, to beg her to say whatever it is.

“A lot of changes,” Kara finally says. “And also not many.”

Alex doesn’t know what that means. She has no idea why Kara is trying to say. If she asks, will Kara shy away. If she doesn’t ask, will Kara think Alex isn’t interested?

“What do you mean, Kara?” Alex finally asks.

Kara presses her lips together, looking up to the ceiling, and when she looks back to Alex her eyes are bright, like they are before she cries. Before she lets something break her. An ice blue. And Alex, still not knowing what that thing that’s breaking her is, launches forward and wraps her arms around Kara. For one terrible second, Alex thinks Kara’s going to pull away and leave again, to flee, that she’s fucked up and pushed too hard when she doesn’t know how to do anything but that. Then, though, Kara’s arms come up and wrap around her and her face presses into Alex’s neck and her hug borders on what it used to when Kara was a teen, newly here, without a sense of her strength. Too tight, something close to popping.

It feels like need, and Alex doesn’t dare protest, just hugs her back tighter.

“When you want to talk, I’m here.” Alex whispers it, not wanting to scare her off. “I’m never going anywhere.”

And, God, at those words, Kara chokes on a sob, out of nowhere, and Alex doesn’t know what to do, because she’s pulling away and turning to leave.

“Kara.”

“Alex, I love you. I have to go.”

She doesn’t even turn back as she says that, but she’s gone. And rather than feeling worse, Alex wonders if maybe they actually got somewhere.

 

* * *

 

 

Things always fall apart.

That’s something Kara has learnt, from too young. And continued to learn. But sometimes they fall together in a way she didn’t anticipate, and this was one way she wasn’t ready for. She wasn’t good for. She dragged around too much heaviness, to be using a world like _us_ with Lena. She should never have stayed so long this morning. Or night. She’d shown up in the early hours and it had just…been so comfortable.

Because Lena’s a friend. A good one.

One who is the only person who’s brought any sense of calm since Kara suddenly started to feel like she couldn’t breathe.

This needs to end. The sex…the sex has been everything. Too much so. It’s been distracting and wonderful and something she could sink into. And it has to stop.

Because Kara, suddenly, can’t breathe again. Alex and her words and the fact that it was too close to everything she’s feeling, and this. It’s all too much. She’s tired.

Kara’s knuckles rap at the door and when Lena opens it, Kara’s breath leaves her body. Her hair is down, soft dark waves, and Kara doesn’t even know when she really started to notice things like that.

She knows she found Lena attractive the first time.

Was it always like that, though, after?

She can’t think about this. She still wakes up with an arm thrown out in bed. Most nights, she floats before sleeping, or before going to Lena’s, high in the dark sky, too high, in the place she can taste the lead. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, it’s with the feel of her mother’s arms, the weight of her necklace, the shaking of the ship rocking as her planet collapsed in on itself behind her. The sound of a planet dying.

Her mouth tastes like dust, far too often.

Just the other day, they emptied out another warehouse full of stashed alien weapons, plans strewn around for an attack in a busy square, and the room, for a moment, was filled with dust as they shifted the weapons out. Coated her skin. It was all she could smell, taste, touch. Like with Rhea. And her army. Like Mon-El almost was, but he was saved.

Because Kara could.

She can’t do this.

That’s the only thought that was racing around her head.

“Kara.”

She’s heard her name said all sorts of ways with Lena, by now. In the beginning, it was almost always with happiness, just at seeing her. A friend. Now she’s heard it, raw and hoarse in her ear as she asks Kara for more, for it harder. She’s heard it breathed out as Lena’s fingers have slid into her, slow and torturous and delicious. She’s heard it gasped, groaned.

She’s never heard it like this.

As if Lena knows why she’s here.

But why should she mind?

 

* * *

 

Lena is not remotely surprised to see Kara at the door.

Kara swallows. “Hi. Sorry to show up without, without messaging.”

“You can always come over. Friends, right?”

Lena steps aside and Kara enters, turning as the door is closed. Lena leans up against it, her hands behind her back, fingertips digging into the wood even as she tries to smile benignly at Kara. She knows why Kara’s here. She’s known since she walked out that morning.

“I need—” Kara sucks in a breath. “I need this to stop.”

Lena doesn’t even flinch. Just nods. Tries to swallow those words that rose that morning, tries not to let her cheeks flame with the embarrassment that she was thinking that while Kara is ending it. “Of course.”

“I think—I think it’s better, that we’re friends. And, and that we—I don’t want it to get complicated.”

Like it isn’t already. Like Kara isn’t broken over Mike, and Lena’s family isn’t trying to destroy everything, again. Like this hasn’t been the most complicated thing, ever, in so many ways. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Lena smiles, something small in the feel of it. “Okay.” And relief floods Kara’s face. “Friends still, right?”

Because Lena doesn’t know if she could cope with losing Kara like that, too.

Kara nods, so enthusiastically Lena’s smile feels less fragile at the sight of it. “Yes. Really. I mean it. I—Lena, you’re my friend.”

And it feels ridiculously juvenile, but Lena needs to hear that. She tries to keep her heart from racing, to strangle down the feeling of it shattering in her chest. She smiles harder and hopes it, too, doesn’t break. “Good. Lunch tomorrow?”

The relief on Kara’s face is still palpable. “Yes. I’ll come by your office?”

“Sounds good.”

It does sound good. It does. In so many ways. Except that Lena has to pretend that they were never sleeping together. That she doesn’t know the way that Kara has shuddered around her fingers, the way Kara’s fingers have left patterns down her thighs. The way Kara likes things hard and fast most times, but has moments she wants it slower, her hips rocking in time.

That none of this hasn’t all culminated in that crushing thought from this morning.

Kara nods and Lena watches her take a step. “I should go, then.”

“Okay.”

But Lena doesn’t move, and Kara takes another step forward. Once she goes, this will be done. A friend. Not someone Lena can touch anymore. Can kiss. Can feel become pliant under her lips and tongue and fingers. Kara leans forward, her hand reaching for the door handle and their shoulders are almost brushing, and Lena turns her head, eyes searching.

“Kara.” She doesn’t mean it to be a whisper. To be pleading. But it is.

Kara freezes, swallows, her eyes darting to Lena’s mouth. Her breath washes over Lena’s lips, mingles with her own, and Lena just needs…she needs.

Her fingers thread into Kara’s hair, fingers against her neck, pushing up into her hair, and pushes forward, their lips barely brushing. It’s a kiss that isn’t a kiss, and Lena needs Kara to finish it.

And Kara does.

She tilts her mouth up, achingly slow, and their lips press together. Soft. Kara’s mouth is like silk. Her lips part and Lena’s tongue runs over her top lip, Kara’s flicking over it. For a second, it deepens, Kara pushing her back, Lena’s back against the door, the wood unforgiving and Kara surrounding her, her smell, her taste, the sound of her gasp. For a second, it more then deepens, and the kiss is simply everything. Kara’s hair falls between her fingertips, Kara clinging to her shirt and pulling them so tight together Lena isn’t sure where they separate. With a shudder, Kara pulls back, their foreheads together, and Lena can’t open her eyes. If she does, she’ll fall apart right there.

“This isn’t stopping.” Kara’s voice is raw, is open. There’s a suggestion there, a _one more time_. A possibility. A want.

There’s want there. Kara wants one more time, to take from this what she has each time. A distraction. A moment.

Lena doesn’t even know for sure what it is Kara wants from it.

It would be so easy. That once more. To let Kara slip her hand into Lena’s pants, to let her fingers slide into Kara’s, into the wet warmth of her, to have her gasp into her mouth, to swallow that sound she all but lives for, that she likes to carry with her, to remember at times the world is too loud.

But something in her will crack down the middle if she does.

That feeling, so heavy in her chest, will spill over.

Lena, once, thought she would almost always give Kara Danvers what she wants.

She’s found the one time she won’t.

“Lena?”

That want is still there. Heavy and heady. It would be so easy.

But so would falling apart, afterwards.

Lena makes herself smile, and hopes it isn’t shaky. “You’re right, this isn’t stopping.”

And she pulls away, her hands slipping out of Kara’s hair. There’s a small second, a nano of one, that Kara looks confused, before she steps back and Lena moves to the side. She draws a shuddering breath and makes sure she’s still smiling. Kara nods, and Lena opens the door.

“I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow,” Lena says. And there’s no tightness to her voice. That’s all in her chest, in her throat.

“See you tomorrow.”

And Kara walks away. Lena shuts the door after her and thuds back against it, slides down and lets her head fall against her knees.

She doesn’t want it to, but a sob cleaves her open and she shoves her hand against her mouth to smother it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your comments and feedback, they're an absolute delight to read and just motivate me to get the next chapter out so well. Also, thank you for your patience. This story is in no way abandoned. I have plans.

Lunch is awkward. It throws Lena back to the time they had coffee, or ate together, in the aftermath of everything that happened. For a hideous ten minutes, her throat clamps up and they avoid each other’s eye over their sweating water glasses. Time seems to skip sound them, cemented in this weird moment, yet racing past and leaving Lena wanting to grasp it back with desperate fingers.

They are such messes.

So she sucks in a breath. Flicks her eyes back to Kara’s face. Straightens her shoulders. She’s a Luthor, by blood and on paper, and as much as that thought settles ice lacing through her belly, she can get through this. She can be uncomfortable but make it work.

She can not think about the seven orgasms in one morning just the day before. Or the hollowness in her chest when Kara left, throat scraped bare with emotion she couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ let herself feel.

“CatCo’s article this morning was phenomenal.”

Kara’s gaze meets her own, and Lena tries not to remember how blown her pupils were when she looked down at Lena, straddling her thighs and riding her hand just the morning before, sometime around orgasm number three. Kara was rarely on top and the image has seared its way into Lena’s brain.

These thoughts are not helping the calm and collected thing.

There’s something unsure in Kara’s eye that just makes Lena want to try harder. Uncertainty doesn’t suit her, and Lena hates that it’s there, that she’s playing a role in it.

Even as her own uncertainty is swirling in each breath, choking her. Filling her up and leaving her breathless.

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“Do you think it made a difference?” Lena asks.

Kara huffs and leans back in her seat, her hands gesticulating and the movement so…organic…Lena lets herself smile. “To be honest? No. Everyone is convinced that all aliens are terrorist. And that’s the ninth alien weapons stash found, which isn’t helping those thoughts. Almost every single one has had some kind of plan for an attack in public spaces found.” Kara chews at her lip, and Lena doesn’t think about how it was so easy to drag a groan out of Kara when Lena bit at it herself. Ran her tongue over the swollen softness of it. Sucked on it, her fingers lacing in Kara’s hair and tugging her head back so Lena could bite at her neck, suck at the skin, as her fingers curled that little harder than she herself would like it, but grinning against soft skin as it sent Kara spiralling.

Lena nods and leans forward, the conversation ebbing into something that’s shedding the uncertainty, even as her own thoughts make it difficult to concentrate. It feels like a betrayal, to think about Kara like this when she’s said she wants the whole thing to stop—even as Kara’s eyes cried out for one last time. “And Cadmus, assumably mostly my mother, has been pointing this out. Loudly.”

There’s a pause, then. And Lena wonders if that small dose of normality they’d managed to claw back was a joke and they were slipping back in to awkward.

The panic that rears up is almost blinding.

She may be embarrassingly in love with Kara, but if that’s to remain unrequited, she still wants their friendship. The soft ease of it. The warmth it leaves filling her breaths and her lungs. The trust she feels for it, for Kara. The surety.

But then Kara cocks her head, something in her eye Lena can’t begin to understand.. “Why do you always do that?”

Lena blinks. “What?”

Did she push too far? Ruined something?

“Tie yourself to Cadmus and your mother. You always say “and my mother” like you have to show the link there.”

Lena swallows. Honestly, she didn’t know she did that. And now that Kara just laid it out like that, blue eyes sincere and honest and taking her in with a truth too brutal for lunch in over-priced cafes. “I, uh,” Lena runs her tongue over her bottom lip, and ignores the way Kara’s eyes flick down to that, then back to meet her gaze, intent and heavy-lidded, “I didn’t realise I did.”

“You do. But you don’t need to. You don’t need to punish yourself with linking yourself to them all the time. You can say how terrible Cadmus are being without always having to punish yourself.”

Lena chuckles, low and nervous and uncomfortable. “I don’t…”

“Yes, you do.” Kara’s words are soft, and she adjusts her glasses. “I know you’re a Luthor, Lena. But you have nothing to prove to me. Or to anyone else. Your name does not define you. All you’ve done since I’ve known you is good.”

The air has left Lena’s lungs, no warning. She isn’t prepared for this. A rough truth, something she hides from. Something, despite herself, she doesn’t really believe.

Yet here is Kara. Standing, breathing, aching evidence that she played a role in Luthor business. It was Lena who opened that portal. Lena who set up the device that sent Kara’s love away.

Here Kara is, though. Blue eyes wide and like the crack of the ocean, the sincerity almost like a burn. Telling Lena she’s _good_.

It’s too much.

Thankfully the food is clattered down in front of them, and they can turn to it and pretend like Kara didn’t just tear some part of Lena wide open.

Again.

 

* * *

 

Kara is trying.

She aches with how much. She focuses on work and she even messages Alex just to say hi, to update her with her day. She has lunch with Lena, coffee with Lena. And to not think of the thing Kara herself asked to stop.

She tries to ignore the need that bubbles in her stomach to make Lena feel good, to feel brighter. She writes off the way she catches herself gazing at the undone button of her blouse as residual muscle memory. An accident. She spent weeks sleeping with Lena. Clearly, Kara is attracted to her. You don’t have sex like that if not. She’s always known she was, anyway. The first day she stood in front of Lena Luthor and was on the receiving end of a smile that often ended in a bite of her own lip told her that. The twist in Kara’s stomach. The way in which Lena’s jaw line could make her hurt. So of course those moments happen now Kara’s ending it.

Before it gets too tangled. Kara loved Mon-el. _Loves_. Though a part of her is a little confused there, the emotion clamping in her gut because sex, for her, never worked like that before. Sex came with feelings. Deep ones. Sex came after time and understanding—yet there was Kara, throwing herself into it with a friend to make herself feel better because the man she loved—loves—is gone.

Because Kara sent him away to save the world.

Said like that it feels like it’s too much. It’s overstated. Overdone. Almost absurd. Sending your love away, a sacrifice, to save the world?

That’s a line in a film, left to make the audience gasp.

Yet it’s what Kara does. Did.

And now she’s a mess, and everything is a mess, and she’s pushed Alex far away so she won’t look into Kara’s eye and see just how _much_ of a mess she really is right now. Won’t see the galaxy Kara sees in the mirror, spread throughout her pupil and blows to ash in minutes. To that dust that still coats everything, every thought, every memory.

The utter sting of Krypton, a scab that just won’t heal.

She is such a mess.

But she is _trying_.

She will be better now. More present. She dealt with Mon-el. She dealt with the nausea that bubble in her stomach when she thinks of the way Rhea just turned to dust at the push of a button. At the way the words ripped out of Kara’s throat. The decision that doomed so many to a painful, claustrophobic death. That sent away Mon-El. The one link to—the one love.

That led to Kara using Lena, distancing herself from Alex.

Ignoring her job, everything around her.

That made her get too close to something she doesn’t des—she can’t do.

So she is present. And here.

At the DEO, she really listens. Watches the way the map lights up with how many caches they’ve found. Evenly around the city. Almost too much so. Scattered at locations, a circle around the city centre.

“There’s always the information we need.”

The room goes quiet. Next to her, not as close as usual, but close enough that Kara can still easily focus in on her breathing, letting it settle over her like she used to, is Alex. Back when the world was too loud and bright and everything hurt, Alex was always there. Kara would feel overstimulation start to prickle along every nerve, leaving her feeling uncomfortable in her own body, like everything just didn’t fit right but then…Alex would be next to her, or near her, or in the next room. And Kara would zero in on her breathing, the thread of her heartbeat behind it. Hyperfocus on it until the air flowed more easily and the world stopped being too much.

Those were, weirdly, the moments she missed Krypton the most. Missed feeling _Kryptonian_ not _alien_. Missed being able to live in the world and not crush things by sitting too hard or hurt someone if she hugged them, their bones cracking fragile-like under her affection. Not feeling bowed down under the sounds the world emits. She spent an entire night going from room to room once, the sliver of the moon cutting over the floor and over her skin through draped windows in the Danvers’ house. Not yet _her_ house. She searched and searched for the sounds that was booming in her ears and it wasn’t until a golden glow had taken over everything that she realised the sound was the sound of her own blood rushing through her body.

She missed a world that happened around her without her _hearing_ all of it.

But Alex’s breathing? That was never too much.

Always a comfort.

“What do you mean?” Alex asks.

Kara swallows, every eye swivelled on her. Suddenly, she wishes she was in her Supergirl outfit. Hands on her hips. An icon to hide behind. It’s not the first time she thinks that they should have kept her identity separated. To help, she takes her glasses off and lets them settle on the desk in front of her. J’Onn cocks his head and watches her quietly. Does he often read her thoughts? She doesn’t think so. Especially now, he’s probably been tempted but he’s been giving her space.

Everyone has.

“Well,” Kara stares at the map, those blinking lights. “The first question we always ask ourselves is “who?”. That’s answered immediately, in some way or another. The second is “why?”.” She bites her lip. “We always find plans, or hear about their plans. It’s always terror related.”

“They want us to know what they’re doing.” Alex sucks in a breath and it throws Kara’s entire rhythm off. “Why?”

“Another question we should be asking ourselves.” J’Onn crosses his arms. “Something is coming.”

“And Cadmus is revelling in it.”

There’s something bitter on Kara’s tongue as she says those words. Perhaps at the memory of the way Lena seems to blame herself for their mere existence. Perhaps because they are not any closer to uncovering their locations.

Alex’s father’s location.

Something is prickling in Kara’s mind and it won’t connect.

As they disperse, Kara to do several more laps of the city, Alex’s arm tugs her back. It’s a gentle tug on her bicep, but Kara lets it happen.

She’s trying.

“Hey.” The word is hesitant and there’s an uncomfortable squeeze in Kara’s gut because she never wants to make Alex feel like this. “Want to have a drink at the bar tomorrow night? You could ask Lena.”

That squeeze turns into more of a wrench. Because Kara is having lunch with Lena. And coffee. But there’s something harder in it now, something that wasn’t there before. It’s in the way they avoid physical contact, when before hugs flowed easily for them. It’s in the way Kara remembers the flutter of Lena’s eyelashes against her cheek, light spilling over her face from the hall as she comes undone straddling Kara’s waist.

But she wants it. Their friendship. Despite the voice in the back of her head that made her realise they had to stop what they were doing. Despite the fear that iced up her spine at the word _us_ that fell from Kara’s lips far too easily.

She calls it ice, but knows it to be fear.

“Sure.” She nods. Tries to smile. Alex’s smile is hesitant, again, in return. “That sounds nice. Eight?”

“Yeah. Eight.”

The hesitancy sounds more like relief this time, and Kara flees from it.

 

* * *

 

The bar is filled with the usual, and Maggie slides onto her bar stool with a slight grunt. The bartender slides over her whiskey on the rocks without even a greeting or the need for her order and that fact makes Maggie smile and tip her glass to him. She’s a little early. Her day wrapped up fairly easily, quite a feat considering everything that’s been going on.

What she’d _really_ like to be doing is sitting down on the sofa she now shares with Alex, something on Netflix playing and something takeout-like and delicious in front of them. Alex would fall asleep on her shoulder and Maggie wouldn’t say anything, just tug her down so her head’s in her lap and she can run her fingers through Alex’s hair.

She didn’t know how much she would love living with Alex. Well, she had a clue. But this? This urge to get home just to be with her? Bickering over the cap on the toothpaste then bursting into laughter over the ridiculousness of it and pushing Alex against the bathroom sink and kissing her to taste the mint on her breath, their lips curved up at their own utter _domesticity_.

She loves it.

And they’ve been so busy they haven’t gotten to enjoy it half as much as she’d like. But the city is up in arms, there are terrorist groups everywhere, and Lex Luthor has somehow become a factor in a way that Maggie can’t quite figure out. Busy doesn’t really cover it.

However, instead of the sofa bliss that’s playing out in her mind, she’s in the bar and about to be social.

She can’t even be grumpy about it. Kara apparently agreed to it pretty readily, a miracle in and of itself these days, and the light in Alex’s eye when she’d told Maggie at two am when they’d stumbled home from the longest day was enough to agree.

“Hey you.”

God, Maggie has it bad. Just those words make her lips curve up over her glass, and she puts it down with a soft _thud_ , swivelling in her chair. Alex steps right between her legs and drops a kiss on her lips. As she pulls back, Maggie curls her fingers into her belt loops and tugs her back for a second, slightly less-appropriate one.

This time, when she pulls back, Alex’s smiling eyes are all Maggie can see.

“Hi,” Maggie breathes.

Alex’s pupils blow, just a little. “Want to blow this joint?”

Maggie cocks her head. “Don’t tempt me, Danvers. Your sister is coming.”

Alex pouts and pulls back, dropping her arm onto the bar top and grinning when the bartender slides the same drink over that he did for Maggie. “Thanks, Steve.” She takes a sip, her eyes glued to Maggie over the rim. “Wanna blow this joint early then?”

“You have a one track mind.”

“I didn’t hear you complain about this at two am this morning.”

Maggie laughs, and Alex’s answering chuckle is loose and easy. Since Kara helped her move, everything has seemed a little more loose and easy. Tension that was just roiling of Alex has eased, if only a little.

“I did _not_ need to overhear that.”

Alex flushes, but Maggie just snorts as Kara steps up to them, fingers on the arms of those glasses she doesn’t need.

“Blame your big ears, little Danvers.” Maggie smiles, no venom in her voice.

“Hey!” Kara’s fingers slide alone her glasses to her ear. “They are perfectly human sized.”

Alex snorts a laugh, Maggie grins, and then, Kara smiles, a quirt of her lips.

The slap of it, the image of that, makes Maggie pause. It stutters for a second, and Maggie realises why.

She hasn’t seen Kara really smile in so long.

They settle around the pool table and Kara orders the cocktail version of alien booze, the one that is mostly sugary flavour and no alcohol. When Alex makes Kara laugh, Alex smiles so wide that Maggie’s stomach hurts at the sight of it.

Kara’s still not…well, the Kara Maggie was slowly getting to know. But this is something.

Alex is cleaning up at pool and Kara’s eyes keep going to her watch. After ten minutes, Alex is lining up a shot that’s going to destroy them, and Maggie is almost too distracted staring down her top to notice.

But she notices anyway.

Kara’s eyes go a little wide and it’s as if, out of nowhere, she has no idea what to do with her hands. Her fingers go to her straw, then her glasses, then the ends of her hair. Her eyes are trained on the door and Maggie picks up her drink and turns her head.

It’s only Lena, hovering in the doorway, eyes flitting around the space. They settle on the back where they’re all huddled and her eyes lock onto Kara’s for a split second.

Not a split second. A long enough few seconds for Maggie to sip her drink, staring over the rim from Kara to Lena, to the eye contact they hold for that brief moment.

Okay.

Right.

“Hey, Lena.” Alex has stood up, game won. Lena’s walking over and Kara is smiling benignly. “Want to join the game? Maybe you can help these two losers out.”

It’s nice, to see Alex trying with Lena. She hasn’t said as much, but Maggie knows watching Kara turn to someone not her has been hard.

Lena splays her fingers over the edge of the table, her gaze cast over the depressing display on it. Really, Maggie thought she was getting better at pool. And shouldn’t Kara be far better at this game?

“I do love pool.” Lena smiles. “Let me just get a drink.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Kara straightens. Her glass is suddenly empty. “I’ll go with you.”

Huh.

Lena’s actually quite fun and even makes a joke about Maggie arresting her. Which is fine with Maggie. She’d rather a joke than an awkward silence about the entire thing.

It turns out Lena is a master at pool and ends up kicking Alex’s ass. Who pretends not to care and Maggie has to bury her smirk in her drink.

Everything is more relaxed and fun than she thought it would be. Kara is…well, Maggie can see she’s trying. Which is nice. Because Maggie was getting close to pulling her aside and seeing if maybe she’d open up to Maggie if not Alex.

But something is…off.

Lena and Kara have been spending all this time together. Yet there’s something…stilted, in the way they are around each other. Maggie saw them once or twice, and they had an easy affection. A casualness to them. Just last week, listening to Kara talk about her there was a softness in her eye. Something…something.

And now that seems to have gone. Or is smothered.

Then, an hour later, Maggie turns away from Alex for a second, and Kara is walking towards the bathroom and Lena’s eyes have gone…darker. More open. She clenches her jaw and seems to tear her gaze away, draw in a shuddering breath. Her eyes are on her drink and she swirls the ice around and knocks it back, her throat bobbing like she’s just so desperate to get it into her.

And Maggie’s eyes widen.

“Just getting another. Anyone else?” Lena asks.

Maggie shakes her head and Alex declines, Lena walking towards the bar.

“What?” Alex asks.

Maggie’s eyes are still wide. She turns to Alex. “Danvers.”

“What?” Now Alex sounds alarmed.

“Lena and your sister are banging.”

Alex chokes on her drink, her eyes watering and Maggie winces as she runs a hand down her back. But already Alex is shaking her head. “No—no they’re not.”

“Oh, they so are. Or they were. Because now they’re all awkward with each other.”

Alex swivels her head and stares at Lena, then to the bathroom door where Kara disappeared to. “No.”

“Yes.” Maggie can feel the grin on her face and she really shouldn’t be grinning. Because Kara is going through some stuff, stuff Maggie has suspicions over, and Lena is probably going through stuff too, and this is actually all probably a bit dramatic and not well adviced, but little Danvers, hell, _Supergirl_ , is banging Lena Luthor.

“They are not. They’re friends. What the hell gives you that idea?”

“It’s just…obvious.”

“To your delusional mind. They aren’t sleeping together.” Alex is hissing the words out, a rushed whisper, her brow all creased together.

“Mhm.” Maggie sips her drink, smug.

“They aren’t!”

“Okay.”

“Sawyer.”

“Danvers?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“They aren’t!”

“Okay.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“Oh, look, now Lena has followed her to the bathroom.”

“Probably to use, you know, _the bathroom_.”

“Okay.”

“Maggie!”

They’re there for minutes, Alex glowering at Maggie and Maggie just calm and smirking, and then Lena is walking out and instead of coming back over, she goes out the side entrance. That leads to an alley.

“That means nothing.” Though Alex’s brow is all scrunched up again.

“I’m going to check on her.”

 

* * *

 

The night was going well. Lena kicked Alex’s ass at pool. Which probably wasn’t the best way to bond with her, if the tense line of her shoulders after each loss was anything to go by. But beyond that, Lena liked Maggie and Alex. And she knew how much Alex means to Kara, even if Kara has been putting everyone at a distance lately, she can see it. The thread between the two of them. The way they echo each other’s body language without realising it. The way Alex is always glancing over, as if to make sure Kara is still really there. That’s she’s safe.

As far as Lena knows, this is one of the first social things Kara has done since…since everything.

So it was going well.

Except how strange it is, to be in other people’s space while in Kara’s. It’s always just the two of them, even before all the sex.

They have their own patterns, their own usual. And maybe that’s all been thrown apart since they stopped sleeping together, but Lena’s been attempting to keep it together. And it’s been working.

But still something between them is grating. It’s not like it was.

Which makes sense. You don’t go from having sex that leaves your toes curled, to besties, but Lena needs it to be okay.

Needs them to be okay.

And Kara is just so hard to read lately. One second she’s broken, her eyes like glass, a tough touch away from shattering beneath Lena’s fingertips. The next she’s hard, shoulders back and gaze unreadable.

She’s hurting. Broken, still.

Lena never knows if she’s doing the right thing with Kara.

So she glances over to see Alex and Maggie wrapped up in each other, and follows Kara to the bathroom.

She realises it’s a mistake the second the door shuts behind her and she’s leaning against it, Kara making eye contact with her in the mirror as she washes her hands.

A big mistake.

The last time they were in here, Kara was on her knees and Lena was—

The flush crawls up her neck and she tries to ignore it.

Kara turns, dropping the paper towel into the bin.

“Lena? Are you okay?”

And, suddenly, Lena isn’t. Emotion is crawling up her throat, prickling at her. She’s not okay. Her mother is a manipulative asshole, and Kara is slowly disappearing after being closer than Lena ever thought possible. And she doesn’t even feel she has the right to tug her closer after being the cause of all her pain.

“Lena?”

Something must be showing in her face and Lena tries to bury it, to get herself under control. She is always under control. She is built, bred, raised for control.

But somehow, right now, that control is nowhere to be found. Is snapping. Shuddering under the gaze of a pretty girl and the swarm of emotion in her eyes.

Kara takes a step closer and Lena shakes her head, her jaw clenched, Kara stopping immediately.

“I’m fine.” God, is that a lie, the taste bitter on her tongue. She’s so far from fine. But that isn’t why she came in here. “I just…I wanted to know. Are _we_ fine?”

And Kara doesn’t even look surprised at the question. No stammered out answer that “of course they are”. Rather, she tilts her head, just so, the curls of her hair falling off her shoulder. “I want us to be.”

Lena nods, her arms crossed in front of her. Anything to keep this girl back and away from her for just a moment. “Are you okay?” Lena’s voice is low, hoarse. That feeling in her throat is worse.

It’s like this room is just them, like they aren’t in a bar trying to feel normal again with Kara’s sister just outside and her girlfriend with her deep, dark observant eyes. It’s as if the sex didn’t happen or the stopping it didn’t happen—or it’s as if none of it matters, either way. Because Kara takes a shuddering breath, her lip trembles. “No.”

And it’s like verbalising it takes something off of her, some weight, because Kara’s shoulders droops, just a little.

“Are you really fine?” Kara asks.

Lena thinks of Rhea and the words that pulled Lena under like a spell. Of her mother and her coldness. Of a big empty house full of empty people. Of Lex, who wasn’t empty but full of life and love and interest in his sister. Of the gleam in his eye as his obsession started to take over. Of opening up a portal, of dooming Kara’s lover to banishment from Earth.

Mostly, though, she thinks of this woman in front of her with her glistening, wide blue eyes and the way she just makes Lena _feel_ so damn much. Love and comfort and fear and…

Mostly just love. Unreturned and painful and burning but there. A comfort in its presence. In the reality of it. All for this woman who smiles and makes Lena’s heart speed up, who gets shy when given the smallest of compliments, who does everything with utter passion as if she has no idea how to do things any other way. Who comes across as bright and sunny and full of optimism, but carries something in the back of her eye, something Lena still yearns to know.

Who can’t, because Kara doesn’t feel that way about her.

“No.” Lena shakes her head, feeling selfish even as she does so. As if her pain can’t even hold a candle to everything Kara has been going through. “I’m not okay.”

There’s a tear tracking down Kara’s cheek, and she may not even notice.

But suddenly this small space is to full of _them_. A _them_ that isn’t allowed to be. Of truth too real and scraping. She gets the feeling, that if she stayed, Kara would open up with everything. And Lena would too. And she can’t put her heart out there like that, torn and dark but still beating, to have it turned away. As much as she wants to get closer to Kara, to hear it all; right here, right now, she just can’t. Not while feeling this bared. That tear is still solitary on Kara’s cheek, and it drops down, splatters on the floor.

Lena twirls and leaves, and just manages to catch the sound of the juddering, harsh breath Kara takes in.

The cool air of the alley is like a slap on her overheated skin, and Lena tugs her jacket off, throws it to the side without caring where it lands. She doesn’t cross her arms, or curl into herself. Instead, she puts her hands on her hips, her shoulders back and chest bared. She stares up to the sky and channels Supergirl.

She is Lena Luthor. She is fine.

She swallows.

She is not fine.

“Hey.”

Lena whirls, and Maggie stands in front her, dark eyes soft with concern. “You alright?”

Lena’s chin juts up. “I’m fine.”

There’s a quirk to Maggie’s lips. “I see that.”

The laugh that Lena emits is strangled, but there nonetheless, and Maggie’s eyes gleam a little. Lena lets her hands fall from her hips.

“If you want to talk…”

It’s strange, this offer from someone she barely knows. From someone who shouldn’t be able to read her—no one can but Kara. But someone who does anyway, and is looking at her with nothing but patience.

“Thanks.” Lena draws in a breath. “Maybe not tonight.”

“I think Kara left…”

Lena gives a nod. “I should probably go home. I have a lot of work to do.”

“Right. Of course.”

But Lena doesn’t move, and neither does Maggie. And for a moment, in that alley, Lena doesn’t feel alone as she takes a second to take a deep breath and pull her fragmented pieces back together.

“I—”

The sound of screeching tyres. A thud, a flying trash can. The shout of her name from Maggie, the gun that gets pulled and fired at the van that’s suddenly behind her. The step she tries to take forward, towards Maggie, safety, but is yanked back. The sight, before a bag that smells stale and scrapes against her skin is pulled over her head, of a burst of glittering purple energy hitting Maggie and sending her flying backwards into a pile of trash. A sharp pain on the back of her head as she’s thrown to the ground of the van.

Screeching tires, shouting.

Then absolute blackness as something jabs into her arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold onto your butts.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Your comments made my day. You're all so great, thank you for your one liners, your paragraphs of thoughts, your kudos. It all feeds writers.  
> It fed me so well I wrote this last night and didn't want to delay since, as pointed out, that cliffhanger was spectacularly cruel! Thanks so much for going on this journey with me :)  
> Also...oops...chapter prediction increased.

A dripping sound.

That stale smell.

Stagnant and musty.

Scraping on her cheeks.

The murmuring of voices.

An ache in her shoulders. Stiffness.

Her hands are tied behind her back.

Bit by bit, Lena tries to take stock, her senses fading in and out. Bag on her head. The same one yanked over it outside the bar. Before Maggie was struck by that…energy. Her stomach rolls over.

Maggie has to be okay.

Please let her be okay.

Cinched hands. Tight, bordering on far too tight. Her wrists are chafed. Rope? No. Cable ties. The sides of the back of the chair are pressed painfully into her biceps. A tingling from poor blood flow up and down her ams.

Dry lips. Parched throat.

A stinging in her arm that she can feel despite the ebbing numbness.

An injection.

Probably why her head is so fuzzy.

Beyond the stale smell of whatever bag is over her head, she can smell damp. Can hear an odd echo mixed in with the dripping.

Though that could be her own, foggy brain making that echo.

The murmuring of voices stops.

Is this it? Has Lex finally succeeded in getting to her? Multiple attempts. Serious ones. Not ones she could write off, but real attempts on her life.

All thwarted.

A vapid bouquet of flowers that she knew the meaning of, but not the intent behind them.

And now this? Is it done? Is she going to meet her end with the smell of mould and stagnancy in her nose, the memory of a lone tear on Kara’s cheek?

She squares her shoulders. Grits her teeth. Juts her chin, the bag grating over her nose, her ears, her cheeks.

If she’s to see her end, she’ll meet it well.

There’s the clack of heels. Even in whatever dungeon hellhole she’s been kept in, the sound of heels?

Even steps.

Lena swallows. Juts her chin just fractionally more.

She knows those steps.

She knows who would wear heels even in somewhere so dank. For a kidnapping, or an execution.

The bag is tugged off her head, nothing gentle about it. Lena tries not to squint, but even the dim lights that hit her eyes make her do so anyway. Her posture doesn’t falter.

Not once.

And as her vision clears, the person in front of her snaps into focus.

Lillian.

Her mother.

Who takes in Lena’s squared jaw and defiant look with something akin to pride. Which makes something like hope flicker in Lena’s chest.

Which makes bile rise up.

How can she still need that?

“Lena.” Lillian cocks her head, stares down at her, face now as inscrutable as ever.

“Mother.” Lena’s voice is a rasp, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She hocks back and spits, and it lands square in her mother’s face.

Lena smirks, and Lillian’s expression doesn’t even change as she tugs out a piece of cloth from her pocket, swipes it over her face. She never breaks eye contact. Neither does Lena.

“You’re awfully smug for someone tied to a chair.” Lillian screws up the cloth and throws it aside. The urge to follow where it lands with her eyes, to take in her surroundings, to catch sight of who is breathing so loud behind Lena, is almost overwhelming. She doesn’t though. Just keeps that eye contact, that quirk to her lips.

“You’re awfully smug for a terrorist.”

Lillian tuts. “Woeful, Lena. Was that supposed to hurt me?” She leans down, and Lena can make out the soft hairs on her cheeks, the light gleaming behind her, a soft blue, different to the dim golden light from a dirty globe. “You’ve proven yourself unable to hold that kind of power.” Lillian almost smirks, but has her face far too schooled for that. “Though I think I hold that power over you.”

“What do you want?” Lena lets the words grind out.

Because really, what could her mother want with her? She must know by now that Lena is done with her. That Lena will never take her side. Surely she must know.

Her mother is nothing to her.

Even while her possible approval is everything.

“Oh, it’s not what _I_ want, Lena.”

Something in Lena, finally, goes cold. The chair, the kidnapping, the ache in her wrists, the thumping of her head, the bag over her face. She let none of it get to her.

But those words send ice through her veins, soak it into her muscles, into the very fibre of her.

Her mother steps back and away and leaves Lena face to face with a screen, buzzing with soft, blue light.

On that screen is Lex. He smiles. He still looks the same, and Lena feels like the bottom has plummeted out of the world.

Everything is cold.

“Hello, little sister.”

 

* * *

 

“Is she okay?”

Kara’s heart is racing. Thumping. It’s the loudest sound in the world right now and it takes everything in her not to lose herself to it, to her own panic. The lights in the hospital wing of the DEO are blinding, so bright the spark along the feeling in her eyes that is always there, ready to flare with her emotions, to send raging hot light out. Her nails bite into her palms and she pushes one hand flat against the door pushing it open.

“Is. She. Okay?”

There are four people, three of whom are blinking at her. A doctor. J’Onn. Alex. Wide eyes, Alex pale and drawn. Her brow pinched tight.

Suddenly, Kara can breathe again.

Maggie is blinking blearily from the bed.

“She’s okay?” Kara breathes out. A long, slow breath.

She can’t remember feeling like this in so long. She can feel the ground under her boots. She can feel the moment. She doesn’t feel like she’s floating over it, disconnected. Alex’s worried look and the doctor’s calm face. All of this because Maggie may have been dead.

Alex nods, “She just woke up a minute ago.”

Maggie pushes the doctor’s hands aside, struggles to sit up. Kara simply stands, arms hanging uselessly by her sides. Alex’s hand is on Maggie’s shoulder. Not pushing her back down, but supportive.

The message on Kara’s phone.

 

_Come quick. DEO. Maggie unconscious._

 

Kara was gone just five minutes. What the hell happened?

“Maggie,” Kara breathes.

“Kara.” Maggie is sitting up, ashen and her fingers sinking into Alex’s arm, her other hand pressed into the mattress to hold herself up. Kara has never seen her like this. “Kara. They took her.”

Everything goes very still. Kara can hear too many heartbeats. Her own. Alex’s. The doctor. J’Onn.

Everyone in the other rooms.

But Maggie’s is galloping now. Her eyes wide and deep and dark, intent on Kara’s.

“Took who?” Kara’s lips feel numb. She knows who she’s going to say before the words leave her lips.

“Lena.” Maggie is half sunk into Alex now, who’s blinking down at Maggie with alarm. Suddenly, Kara can’t hear anything. Nothing in the background. Just Maggie’s voice. And Kara thinks she may throw up at what she’s hearing.

Maggie slumps even more into Alex, as if all the fight in her is gone. Her forehead shines with sweat, and Kara wonders, for a split second, if she woke herself up before she was ready out of sheer will to pass this on to Kara. “They took Lena.”

“What happened?” Everything is still. Silent. Eery. Kara takes a measured step forward. Her eyes burn, prickle. It’s almost unbearable, but she bites it town, bites down the flare that’s threatening to burst out. Alex may throw her a look, as if ready to try bring her back, but Kara fights it herself. Clenches her jaw. Her fists shake at her side. If she thought she was present when worried about Maggie, this is so present it physically hurts. “Maggie? What happened?”

“A van. Out of nowhere. I tried to help her, I got off two rounds and then they hit me with something right as they put a bag over her head and started to pull her in.” Maggie sounds far away. Distant. It’s not silent now. There’s a ringing in Kara’s ears.

“Who is “they”?”

“That’s the thing.” Maggie swallows. “I have no idea.”

“What did you hear? See?” Kara takes another step forward. Blinks once, hard, to try push back the burn.

No one tells Kara to step back, to calm down. Alex flinches forward, but Maggie grips her arm tighter. Holds her back to her.

“A black van. Masked faces. There was no time to get a plate. Nothing. Whatever they hit me with came from some kind of weapon, it looked like any other gun. But instead of a bullet—“

“Thank God,” Alex mutters.

“It was some kind of energy. Purple.”

“Maggie I am so glad you are okay. Really.” That ringing is back. “But you had to have seen something _more_?”

There’s desperation in Kara’s voice she barely registers.

Maggie shakes her head, then flinches as it must hurt. “Nothing. A bag over Lena’s head.” Kara’s vision is almost white. “That’s it. We can only speculate. Lex? Cadmus, because of Lillian? Something unrelated?”

The list is long. And with no leads to any of them. She needs something to fight. Something solid to follow, to sink her fist into. Something. _Anything_. Rao, the burn. It’s almost unbearable.

Kara stands, the room echoing around her.

She has nothing. No way to help.

“Uh, ener-energy!”

Everyone jumps and stares at Alex, who is still grasping Maggie, fingers in her lank hair and fluttering against the pulse in her neck.

“Alex?” Maggie asks. She’s even more ashen, and Kara bites back the urge to throw most questions at her.

“Energy. The gun is energy. Maybe we can trace it.”

Kara blinks at her. Then it clicks.

“J’Onn.”

But he’s already moving towards the door.

“I’ll get Winn.”

Kara lasts all of three seconds. “Let me know when Winn has something.”

It’s burning. Crawling down her cheeks almost. Her hands are clenched so hard she’s surprised she hasn’t shattered herself. Twirling around, her cape flutters and Kara takes measured, careful steps out the door. Someone may say her name, but she isn’t sure. Can’t care. She’s running by the time she brushes past Winn, on his way to Maggie’s room.

She’s inhumanly fast by the time she’s on the balcony and pushing up, straight up.

She’s not fast enough to be even a foot off the ground before she’s looking skyward and the heat simply _explodes_ from her eyes, lasers straight up, slicing through molecules and atoms and cloud and sky and a scream tears out of her throat at the release of it, the sheer fire in it, the way it pulsates after she’s held it back. Her hair is whipping around her face, and it takes everything in her to stop just above the cloud and to cut it off, the beams of light finally flicking out as she screws her eyes shut.

They have Lena.

 _Someone_ has Lena.

And Kara is shaking; she’s finally realised it’s because she utterly terrified.

 

* * *

 

All the preparation in the world could not have had Lena ready for Lex’s face.

She hasn’t seen him in so long. Not since the trial, when he sat, calm and placid, and just stared straight at her while she betrayed him.

Betrayed the one person who ever loved her, accepted her, listened to her. Bared his secrets, bared the truth of how he had slowly spun out of control and into obsession, into something dangerous. Into terrorism and murder. Betrayed him while he sat and just watched her do it.

But she didn’t betray people who deserved protecting.

She didn’t betray herself, even as it felt like she did.

No. Just betrayed the Luthor name. Her mother. Her father’s memory.

And Lex.

The thing that made a part of herself crack open.

Now she does everything in her power to keep her chin up. Her eyes unreadable.

That never worked with Lex, though. He always knew her.

It shows in face now, the way he tilts his head, ever so slightly, his lips curling up into a smile.

“Hello, Lex,” she says. It’s almost a whisper. “How’s solitary treating you?”

He shrugs, so at ease every hair on her arm raises. “Not so solitary, it would seem.”

“How?”

He smiles then, and it sends a curl of shock through her system. Because it’s the same grin he’d give when she’d make a chess move that would lead to her victory, or asked a question he thought beyond her. The delight at her achievements. Her skin crawls.

He doesn’t get to do this.

“How? Why? You always know the questions to ask, Lena. I’ve missed that.”

There’s a lump in her throat at those words, even as bile burbles next to it. She doesn’t want him to say next what she just knows he’s going to.

“I’ve missed _you_.”

She swallows it down, hardens herself. “A strange way to show it, putting so many hits on my life.”

“You hurt me.” He’s still smiling, his shrug a simple ‘what else was I supposed to do’.

“You hurt a lot of people yourself, Lex,” she murmurs.

Lillian snorts to her left but Lena doesn’t even look at her.

His looks hardens, a very brief moment. It’s not even an expression, more a flash in his eyes that doesn’t affect that smile. “People hurt me. And I only hurt aliens. Not people.”

Lena wants to leave. She wants to be at home. She doesn’t want to be here, listening to this again. She doesn’t have it in her. Years, it took, for her to accept what her brother had come. And only hours for her to tear him down. Because this just grates with something deep within her, some core part of her. She could never condone his actions, even if just to stand by as he did them.

“How are you doing this, Lex?” She swallows and it’s heavy in her throat. It does nothing to push down that lump, to drown it, to flush the bile. “You’re supposed to by untouchable.”

“No one is untouchable.” Lillian’s satisfied hiss gains Lex’s flick of his gaze, but not Lena’s. She keeps hers on Lex.

“There’s something to be said for a mother’s love, isn’t there Lena?” His gaze is back on her and Lena feels something twitch in her cheek.

Asshole.

“There’s always a way.” He steeples his fingers. “A guard who will turn for a price. A high one, but nonetheless, a price we can afford.”

“That simple, hm?” Lena licks her dry lips and it does nothing to help how parched she is.

“Get her something to drink,” Lex says without looking away.

A shuffling sound. Not her mother. Some lackey. A bottle of water appears in front of her, a straw in it. She shakes her head.

Lex tutts, even as Lena can hear her mother’s derisive huff. “Come now, Lena. There’s no reason to do that,” Lex says.

She purses her lips.

There isn’t, it’s true. If they wanted to poison her, they could easily. She’d heard the seal snap on the bottle. But still, they could have easily done it any other way. Th drug they injected her with clearly dehydrated her. There’s no point in increasing that. Dehydration leads to poor decision making, inability to focus.

She needs to focus.

Finally, she leans her head fractionally forward and sucks back on the water, cool, refreshing. Half the bottle gone in an instant. It’s hard not to sigh in relief.

Lex nods. “Good. See, Mother. She can be reasonable.”

Ah, yes. Lena, the unreasonable, petulant child. Not participating because she’s sulking.

It has nothing to do with the terrorism and xenophobia.

“I’m yet to believe that.” Lena hates Lillian’s voice.

“Mother would have had you completely left behind, Lena.” He leans forward slightly. “I wanted you involve. I knew you could be brought back to us. Did you like my gift?”

She shakes her head.

He doesn’t even look disappointed. “I know you love flowers. I knew you’d get my meaning. I watched those ships leave, Lena. I watched the footage of aliens turning to dust and I heard that you were behind the device and I was filled with pride. Pride for you.” That gleam is in his eye. The one she saw that scared her, younger than she’ll admit, even truly to herself. She saw this coming for a long time and here it is, splayed out on a screen while he sits in solitary, his sister tired to a chair with chafed wrists and a mother as zealous as he is.

“That was to save the city.”

“To save humanity,” he almost hisses.

She laughs, and hopes the bravado she barely feels is in it. “No, the city. Including the aliens living in it.”

His mouth twitches. Almost twists.

“I told you Lex. She’s lost to us.”

“No she’s not.”

Lena wants to slap hem both for taking about her like she’s not there, for discussing her loyalty as if they get to decide it.

“What do you want from me?” Lena asks.

Lillian steps further into her view, standing to Lena’s left so she can look at both Lex and Lena.

“I want nothing from you,” she says. And that hurts more than Lena will admit.

“I want you with us, sister. That is all. You belong. You betrayed me,” Lex’s voice hardens at that. “But I know that you are a Luthor. One of us. Your intelligence, your very name. By blood, by right. By deed.”

Lena juts her chin. “No.”

And Lex actually looks disappointed. A flash of it in his eye.

“I betrayed you because it was right. I refuse to help mother because it’s _right_. I made that device and I left it up to Supergirl to decide because it was _right_.”

Lena did what was right. Kara’s face, opposite her. Telling Lena she’s good. Something in that memory gives Lena the ability to stare him down.

Lillian is nothing. She may be the reason for a tonne of issues Lena needs to deal with. The reason Rhea could manipulate her so easily. But Lena is sitting here and she tied to a damn chair and she can’t feel her hands and regardless, she is telling them no.

“No, Lex.”

He doesn’t even look angry.

But at the word _Supergirl_ he actually smirks.

“Ah yes, Supergirl.” His gaze flicks to Lillian again and they share a look like they know something Lena doesn’t.

That ice feeling is back.

“How inconvenient you seem to have been…disillusioned by her.” That smile is back. “But that is easily remedied.”

Lena finally looks to Lillian properly, and back to Lex. What is going on?

“But we have other matters to discuss. Surely, Lena, some part if you knows I, and Cadmus, are in the right? Aliens are dangerous. A threat to humanity. Their weapons. Their technology. Just look at the damage Superman and Supergirl have done to our cities and people.”

“Helping us!”

Lex shakes his head. “Would we need their help if they weren’t here? Most of the heats are here in response to their presence. The others we have the ability to deal with ourselves. Humanity is not _weak_. We have weapons. Guns. The intelligence.”

That light in his eye, the straightness to his posture. The fervour in his words. The way Lillian seems to have grown taller as he speaks.

They believe this.

“Humanity is too _scared_ to speak out. They think they’ll be reprimanded.” He’s flushed.

He’s lost to her.

Which she’s known for so long, but watching it happen in front of her, again, is like a knife twisting between her ribs. The slip of it unnoticed until it’s wrenched and sinking into the softness of her lungs, stealing her air.

A vacuum of space, punctured and altered.

“We’ll show them,” he says. “We’ll show them they have every right to fear, to speak up. To side with humanity.”

Lena may throw up.

Because everything is starting to click.

 

* * *

 

Fear is still trembling in Alex’s muscles. The sound of gunfire, running outside to the smell of shots and a weird electrical burning smell, and an unconscious Maggie.

Alex had no time to compute. To tick through a list. To realise she should have checked on Lena. That was why Maggie had gone out there in the first place.

But Alex was filled with fear so overwhelming all she did was call J’Onn and get an emergency team over.

Not like her. Not like her training, which Alex lives and breathes.

But for one excruciatingly long second Alex thought Maggie was dead, and maybe that buys her a little forgiveness for that. Her skin was like ash, her body too still.

And then Alex heard her breathe.

And now she’s fine and the doctor has ordered her on bed rest for a few days but everything else is fine and she’s _fine_.

Kara is not fine.

Lena is most likely not fine.

And guilt twinges in Alex’s gut because relief is still flooding her system, colliding with the fear and muting it.

Maggie’s exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, and clammy skin. She needs to sleep, but is refusing and Alex half feels like sticking her with a sedative.

But Kara is back in the room and she’s trembling and, for once, or maybe like always these days, Alex has no idea what to do.

Kara’s eyes look like they’re about to glow. Or were just glowing. Her jaw is tight, a line of muscle jumping out on her neck. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she’s so fixated on what Winn is doing, waving a wand looking thing over Maggie and making faces as it blips and flashes, she doesn’t notice Alex’s stare.

Or maybe she’s not fixated on Winn exactly. But rather, like when she was new to the planet and overwhelmed and overstimulated, has found one thing to focus on.

Right now, she looks so alien, and Alex is reminded that Kara is _not_ human. Not in a bad way. Not in any way except that this is just fact. The dull glow behind her eyes, the ethereal look to her skin, in her stance, in the way she carries herself.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, when Kara is happily chewing on potstickers and gulping orange juice, or complaining about work while flopped over Alex’s sofa.

Alex is almost worried _for_ the people Kara is about to find. Because they will find them. With Lena alive, and unhurt. They have to.

There’s no other option.

Because her sister has been through enough, and Alex doesn’t know if she’d survive the loss of Lena.

Of course Alex wants Lena to live because she deserves to, and is a person, and important in her own right. A life deserving of life.

But that selfish part of Alex that would do anything to keep her sister safe wants it because Kara needs it.

She didn’t realise how much Kara needs it, until she sees the hardening on Kara’s face when Winn straightens and shakes his head.

“What?” Kara asks.

And there’s no emotion in her voice.

She’s shut herself off and Alex is almost scared of her.

Scared _for_ her. But partly scared of her, too. Of the choices Kara may make when she’s quivering with whatever emotion is playing through her right now.

“It’s unknown. We have no record of this type of energy.” Winn actually looks nervous. Of Kara, or the situation, Alex doesn’t know.

“Winn? Can you trace it?”

He nods, quickly. “Yes. I can. Just not immediately. I need a bit of time. To write an algorithm. To find out how, exactly, it can be traced.”

“How long?”

“Anything from five minutes to an hour.”

“Winn!”

He jumps and starts walking out the room, “Right. Right. Going.”

Kara is _thrumming_ in the centre of the room, with nothing to do. Her fist twitches next to her thigh. Theutter _anguish_ her face leaves a lump in Alex’s throat, growing and choking her.

“Kara.”

“I need to do something.”

Alex nods and Maggie lets go of her hand, a silent signal to do what she needs.

“I know, Kara. But you just need to wait." She steps closer. "To be patient. Winn will find a way to trace it and you’ll find her.”

Shallow breaths from Kara’s chest. Like she needs to gulp down the air but can’t quite figure it out. Vibrating with the need to _do_ when there is _nothing_ to do.

Nothing to do but wait.

Kara actually chuckles, the sound strangled and grating and painful. Her eyes are wet and wide, pupils blown as she stares Alex straight in the eye. It’s like the other day—almost a slap of it, this window into Kara that she hasn’t seen much in so long, what with Kara’s averted eyes and avoidance. That lump grows more, and she’s never felt so useless. Kara is in pain, and she can’t help. “Patient? Patient while Lex finally achieves his goal and kills her? Or her mother puts her through hell? Or who knows what?”

Her voice is twisted, her brow furrowed.

“We’ll find her.” Alex says it like she’s sure, with a nod. She stops a foot away and doesn’t touch her, just lets Kara knows she’s there. She’s present. That Kara isn’t alone.

“Maybe we won’t.” The words sound wet, drowned in everything Kara is feeling. “Maybe we won’t and she’ll—she’ll—” she can’t even say it. “She’ll be _gone_.”

The words aren’t there, but Alex can hear them.

_Gone, like everyone else._

“Kara.” The word feels like it shatters out her mouth. The memory of Kara fleeing with Alex old her she wasn’t going anywhere. The things Alex has missed or not seen properly.

“I poisoned the Earth for the one—for the one person who got a part of me that no one else really can. I poisoned it and sent him away because apparently I’m so broken I can do that.”

This is not what Alex expected to hear. She expected to hear the pain of lost love.

Kara’s palm swipes at her cheeks, smearing the tears and doing nothing to stop them.

“You’re not broken.” And Alex isn’t actually sure she believes those words.

Kara scoffs. “I can’t breathe, Alex. I can’t. Everyone has something, on this Earth. My everything imploded behind me. I relived that for years in the phantom zone. And everything—everyone—”

A part of Alex knew this wasn’t just about Mon-el. That something was missing, that she was missing something.

She just didn’t realise how much.

“I can’t lose her too.”

The words are rasped out, and there’s so much Alex wants to ask her. To know. To let Kara let all of this out, to finally voice what’s been eating her alive since Mon-El.

Since before that.

Since she was thirteen.

Had Kara truly loved Mon-El? Or had she loved a connection to something she thought was lost to her, forever?

In losing him, was losing her greatest love worse? Or losing that connection all over again?

Alex thinks there’s a hole in her, cracking wider and wider, and Kara all but pulsates in front of her, fists clenched and cheeks wet.

“Kara. I am so sorry.”

Kara makes a sound, small and smothered, a gasp that’s dragged in. Her hand is against her chest, over that family crest, fingers digging into it.

Then Winn is running in the room.

“I am a genius! It’s ready, already. I am that good. it was similar enough to another and I could--anyway, we have the location the trace ended in. Hopefully it’s where they are.”

He blinks at the back of Kara’s head, at Alex. Who knows what he sees in Alex's face?

And Alex watches Kara’s look shutter. She straightens.

“Kara. Wait for a team.”

Kara spins and plucks up the device in Winn’s hand and is gone. Alex sighs, that hole even deeper at the loss of Kara again. The loss of her finally talking to her. The way her expression closed off.

Alex spins around, and Maggie blinks at her from the bed.

“Go.” Is all Maggie says.

“I love you.”

Maggie’s lips quirk up, even as Alex is turning to follow her sister. To mobilise a team. To get there as soon as possible, even though her sister will only be minutes away. “I love you too.”

Winn follows her, “I missed something, didn’t I?”

“I think we all did, Winn.”

 

* * *

 

“You’ve been planting the weapons. The evidence of terrorist aliens.”

Because of course Cadmus has. They’re not enough of a cliche.

“This danger already existed,” Lillian says. “We just showed how much so.”

Lena shakes her head. “You’re both insane.” She smiles, a little. Looks from one to the other. “And you were _wrong_. People are still arguing against it, refuse to condemn all aliens. You’ve fractured our society, but not enough.”

“Not yet.”

These words are almost enough for Lena’s shoulders to falter. For the facade she’s kept wrapped around herself to fade.

She looks from one to the other. Her mother, haughty. Lex, almost gleeful.

“You wouldn’t.” Her lips feel numb.

Neither answer, just stare at her.

“If you,” Lena almost can’t say it, “If you set off a bomb and kill humans—do, do you not see the hypocrisy in that?”

“It takes what it takes.”

Lex said those words before. At the peak of it all. When Lena knew he was too far gone to pull back, even as her fingers twitched to do so. To pull back that brother that was her everything.

Of course it’s been Cadmus. Of course they will go this far to make their point.

There are no ties to them. No links. Everyone will believe it was orchestrated by aliens. Aliens hell bent on the annihilation of humanity. Of Earth. A trail of proof leading to that only conclusion.

“You’ll kill innocents?” She tries again, even though she knows there’s no use.

“They’re not innocent.” Lillian almost sounds disappointed in her. The sound of it is so familiar it could almost be a balm. “Until they’re on our side, they’re on the other side.” She cocks her head. “Like you?”

Lex tuts again. “You may have been right, Mother. But don’t worry. There’s a plan to sway her.”

“Why waste your time?" Lillian rarely sounds frustrated at Lex. Never, really. But it's there now. "She’s nothing. She’s no Luthor. She’s weak.”

“If being a Luthor means this?” Lena scowls at them. “Then no, I’m not a Luthor.”

She once thought her identity was all tied up in that name. She juts her chin again. It's not.

“You say this now.” Lex doesn’t sound at all phased. “But just wait, Lena. Your entire world will come crumbling down. Your relationships with little members of the press?”

Lena freezes, her entire body taught. “You’re been watching me?”

“Of course.” He sneers. “Oh, Lena. You are so, so naive.”

Her mother looks pleased.

Lex looks pleased.

Lena is going to throw up. Are they threatening Kara?

Or something else?

What is she missing? It's like she's staring at a puzzle and the piece in her hand, ready to complete it but she can't see the entire finished image.

“Don’t you touch her.” Lena’s voice is steady.

“We won’t have to.”

What does Lex mean by that?

“But first, the bomb. Mother? Five minute timer?”

Because even with his bought guard, Lex can only orchestrate. Can’t do.

Her mother slips out a device from her pocket. It’s blinking red, and Lena can only taste that bile now, up her throat and leaving her sick.

Kara, a threat or a promise in their words, Lena doesn’t know. The civilians, a bomb.

And she’s stuck here.

“Don’t do this. They’re innocent.”

Lillian stares straight down at her. “None of us are innocent.”

She presses the button.

The wall behind them explodes out, rock and rubble flying, dust spreading. And Supergirl steps through the hole, relief ballooning in Lena’s chest. Supergirl’s face is flayed with anger, jaw tight, fury flashing in her eyes—Lena could almost imagine her eyes flashing red with the rage that seems to be defining her.

She looks the image of an alien who could tear them all apart.

And Lena isn't remotely scared. Instead, she smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...maybs keep holding on to your butts.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long. I really, really struggled with this chapter. We were not friends. I have people who could provide screenshots of me yelling about it. Also, I've been travelling and jet lagged more often than I would prefer. But still, I'm sorry! And thank you to some lovely humans who helped me iron this chapter out.  
> MAJOR ANGST WARNING.  
> Stuff is happening. It's gonna get bumpy. You all checked in that you were holding onto your butts after the last two chapters, so that's a good thing...  
> Thank you, all, for sticking with this weird little angsty story in which I just wanted to explore poor Kara getting to actually experience her inner turmoil that then spiralled into me dragging poor Lena down with her. Your comments are all great and keep me going! Honestly.

The moment Kara is through that wall, the anger coursing through her body doubles at the sight of Lena, tied to a chair. The room is almost red for a second, saturated in the colour as fury bounds through her veins before it fades and all she knows is clarity.

She takes it all in like various snapshots.

Lena, pale, tied fast. But alive, breathing. Kara’s fists tighten at her side, her jaw tight.  She can hear Lena’s heart racing, can hear her breaths, the way they’re dragging through her lungs. There’s a smile on her face as she seems to drink in the image of Kara standing by the wall, dust floating around her. For the smallest of moments, Kara’s own lips quirk up at her. At the way Lena doesn’t even look surprised that Supergirl is there.

Lillian eyes wide, anger licking at the edges, before the look snaps away and there’s nothing there.

A screen, Lex Luthor’s face on it. He’s leaning back in his chair, rocking on it, amused and looking like he has all the time in the world.

Hank, the light catching the metal that makes him whole, staring at her, expressionless.

Kara fists ball even harder.

“Supergirl.” Lillian cocks her head. “How nice of you to join us.”

She’s cool as anything. Calm. A rock.

Lex grings. “One could say, right on time.”

But that surprise, that flash of anger when Kara first emerged. She’s a master at hiding how she feels, but Kara caught it. There’s a waver in Lillian’s voice, hard to notice. Uncertainty. Kara can bet they hadn’t thought she’d find them.

The last time Kara saw the woman, it had been clear she knew who Kara really was. Now, Lillian’s watching her, a secret smile on her lips and her daughter fastened to the chair like this is all completely normal.

Kara hates her. Viscerally, the feeling curling in her gut and settling there like it belongs. There’s an urge itching up her arm to swing it at her.

She tightens her fists even harder.

“Tic toc, Supergirl.”

Lex’s voice comes out loud and clear and Kara doesn’t even spare him a glance. Super speed carries her to Lena, the ties around her wrist an easy break before Kara snatches her close to her side and they’re standing back by the hole in the wall.

Lillian blinks and just keeps staring at them, Lex grins like it’s all everything he ever wanted and Hank doesn’t even flinch. Snug against Kara’s side, Lena’s chest moves rapidly against her, and Kara tightens her hand around her waist, Lena’s fingers gentle against the blazing emblem over Kara’s chest. She imagines they look like something out of an old adventure film, Kara’s hair shifting in the wake of her speed, Lena all but wrapped around her side, coiled around her. There’s something possessive in the way Kara doesn’t let her step back, and she tells herself it’s the hero in her, the one who wants nothing but to keep Lena safe.

She doesn’t even believe her own lies at this point.

“Oh, Mother.” Lex chuckles, almost giggles. That, more than anything, unnerves Kara.“This really is everything we could have ever dreamed.”

“How? All this planning?” Lillian doesn’t even look at the screen with Lex on it, but stares at them as she speaks like she knows there’s no point hiding the plan now.

“Plan B, Mother.”

“Supergirl.” Lena’s voice is a rough whisper against Kara’s ear and her spine tingles at it, something inappropriate when surrounded by enemies and something else they don’t understand. “They’ve set of a bomb has four minutes. They want to frame aliens to incite further hatred.”

“Supergirl!” Lex’s voice, high and mocking of Lena, is enough to pull Kara’s thoughts away from how Lena’s breath is hot against her skin. No one in the room is moving towards them. “Lena.” He tuts his tongue. “That took all of three seconds for you to betray me. Again. Well.” And he claps his hands together and shrugs, grinning again. “Mother did warn me. Though I still think Plan B will help.”

“Tell me where the bomb is.” Kara juts her chin, lets Lena pull back from her and stand with her arms crossed and shoulders back like she doesn’t feel the loss astutely. Lena’s heart is still pounding, and Kara aches to reach over and take her hand, the feeling clashing with everything else. Her wrists are red—she was bound too hard and something flares in Kara’s chest at the thought.

She needs to focus. Lena is okay.

Civilians are about to get very hurt.

Lillian just looks at her, eyes cool, and Kara can’t fathom how someone like her raised someone like Lena.

“Tell. Me.” And her fury must be leaking into her tone because Kara’s voice sounds like ice.

“Now what would we have to gain from that?”

Kara puts her hands on her hips. “Your cover is blown, there’s no point to this.”

“Yes, mother.” Lena’s voice doesn’t waver once and Kara feels pride blossom in her chest, warm and sturdy and sure of Lena. “You blow it now and Cadmus comes out looking like villains, and everyone will know the truth anyway.”

“Or I blow it and escape.”

Those words, the cold in them, makes Kara shift her weight to her other foot.

“You wouldn’t.”

Lillian smiles, and if her voice had been cold, this is ice. “I don’t think you know a thing about what I would do.”

Kara takes a step forward, her hands balled into fists at her side and her eyes burning like they had been only hours before, itching. “There are innocent civilians at risk.”

“There is my freedom at risk.”

Kara doesn’t even know she’s decided to do so until she’s done it. There is Lillian, the scruff of her collar in Kara’s balled up hand, held just above Kara’s face, her legs kicking at Kara’s shins. That surprise, again, glints, Lillian’s hand grasping at Kara’s forearm like she’s desperate for some dignity.

“Tell me,” each word Kara says is enunciated,” where it is.”

Lillian smirks. “Let me go, and I’ll deactivate it when I’m free.”

“No.”

“Won’t let me go to save civilians Supergirl?” Lillian’s eyebrow quirks up. “Interesting.”

“Maybe because it’s that I don’t believe you’ll deactivate it.” And Kara isn’t sure if that’s the only reason, right then.

“Then this is on you, Supergirl.”

And, in her anger, Kara didn’t realise her other hand grasped a charger. She raises it and presses another button. Behind her, Lex laughs.

“Boom.” And Kara can hear the smile in his voice.

Too far away for anyone else to hear, Kara hears the explosion, Lena’s gasp as she realises what her mother has done, and Kara feels something snap in her chest like a rubber band. Lillian is pressed against the wall, her head snapping back and Kara is raising her fist, only the sound of her blood rushing in her ears.

“Supergirl.”

Alex’s voice makes her freeze, and Lillian smiles down at her, closed lipped and sure of herself, even now.

“Supergirl.”

Lena’s voice makes her lower Lillian to the ground, still holding her to the wall.

“Alex, she set off a bomb, we don’t know where.” Lena’s voice is sure, a weight Kara can tether herself to when all she wants is to punch the woman in front of her.

“Reports of it coming into my comms.” Alex is stepping closer, Kara can hear her. “Supergirl.” Her voice is concerned. “J’onn flew me here after you, backup is coming. We’ve got his. Go help with the bomb.”

Lillian cocks her head and there’s only a foot of angry air between Kara and her. Heat is building in Kara’s eyes, and it would just be so easy. Who is this woman to play god like this?

“See Lena?” Lillian doesn’t even break eye contact, blood dripping from her nose, the impact to the wall apparently. “See what they all _really_ are?”

“Supergirl.” Lena’s voice. A hush. One she’s heard whisper her name, not Supergirl, but _Kara_ , like when desperation pulled them both together. “The bomb.”

And Kara lets go, Lillian slumping a little. Sucking in a breath, Kara turns and speeds out, not stopping to see the look on Alex or Lena’s face.

There are civilians that need saving.

 

* * *

 

Kara’s gone and just leaves behind air that swishes Alex’s hair around. Well, she leaves Alex staring as stoically as she can muster at Lillian, who does her best to straighten and act tough, but Alex gets the feeling she’s hiding how rattled she is.

This is the woman who orchestrated his entire thing. That got Maggie hurt. That made Kara spiral after Lena was taken. That kidnapped her own daughter and probably fucked with her mind. Again. That just blew a bomb that hurt who knows how many. That is trying to incite violence and misunderstanding.

Did Alex mention that she didn’t like Lillian Luthor?

Alex smirks and pulls out the handcuffs she had clipped into her belt and lets them dangle from her finger.

“You can’t expect us to simply go with you?”

Hank Henshaw, who Alex had conveniently forgot about, as he’s the henchman that she always thought him to be, has stepped menacingly forward. Alex cocks her head and takes another step forward herself, handcuffs still dangling from her finger, and conveniently puts herself between those two and Lena.

Alex’ll be damned if she lets them anywhere near the woman ever again. And not just because that would make Kara fall to pieces like she did earlier. A lump in her throat, suddenly, that she can’t swallow past. Kara, who was so distracted by everything in her head, so rattled, so much more broken than Alex had realised, that she didn’t even fly straight after the bomb.

Once all this is over, Alex may just wrap her sister in the biggest hug she can manage. And then maybe suggest it’s time for some therapy.

“We do expect you to just come with us, yes,” J’onn says as he steps in and stands beside her, squared up and in his matin form. Alex’s smirk turns to a grin. “Sorry I’m late, was checking on that bomb. Supergirl is on it.”

Agents flood into the small space and Hank goes to step forward, but Lillian lays a condescending hand on his arm.

“Listen to your mistress, Henshaw.” Alex’s gun is out anyway, pointed right at him, handcuffs still in the other hand. She is just _itching_ to slap them on the woman. “You’re _way_ outnumbered.”

Finally, the man stands down and an agent steps forward to put him in reinforced cuffs while Alex steps up. She would almost say she’s gleeful as she puts the cuff over Lillian’s wrist and tugs her arms behind her back to join them together.

It’s damn satisfying.

Alex’s face is right next to her ear as she whispers, “No one to break you out this time, Lillian.”

“Except maybe your father.”

Alex grits her teeth and maybe tightens the cuffs borderline too tight. Only borderline.

It takes a lot to not bite something back, because she’ll damn well be using this opportunity to get info about her dad now she finally has the woman in custody and she won’t jeopardise that by losing her cool. Probably.

There’s a slow clapping sound and agents are bustling around, securing the room and Hank Henshaw is being led away by J’onn—his strength the most trusted. Alex pushed Lillian in front of her then steps to her side, hand securely on Lillian’s arm to stare down at the screen. She bends just a little and raises her eyebrows at the man on the screen, who’s still clapping as he grins at her.

“Nicely played, Agent Danvers. You’ve got wit, looks, the moves. _Nice_.”

“You’re awful cocky for someone whose plan was just foiled, Luthor.”

“I am, aren’t I?”

And he keeps grinning, even as police fill the room around him and someone shouts, “Secure!”

He doesn’t break eye contact with her even as he’s yanked up and cuffed and the screen flicks off, his cocky grin the last thing on it.

“Charming, your son.”

Lillian’s lips quirk up and Alex just wants to shake them all, so arrogant even as they’re all being arrested and their organisation starts being dismantled. “He’s definitely that, Agent Danvers.”

Alex pushes her forward and the room is mostly empty, one agent standing at the door to keep it secured while they focus their energy on the interrogations and the aftermath of the bomb. Almost empty except Lena, standing where she was when Alex walked in and just staring at her mother with an indiscernible look on her face. Lillian just stares right back at her and Alex passes her off to the agent that appears at the door.

But not before Lillian just clicks her tongue. “Always the disappointment.”

Maybe Alex should have tightened those cuffs even more.

Lena’s face doesn’t even twitch and Lillian is taken away.

There are a hundred places Alex needs to be right now. She needs to follow up on the bomb, interrogate Lillian, try to find out where her father is, ensure Lex is truly secured, put everything in motion to ensure that he can’t get contact outside of his cell ever again, make sure the guard responsible is under arrest, check on Maggie. She needs to see her sister, after the broken look in her eye from before and the way she’d looked ready to pull Lillian apart with her own hands.

Instead she says, “Hey Lena. Let me give you a super quick debrief so it’s over fast and I’ll drive you home.”

Lena’s lips press into a tight line and she nods once and turns and walks out the room, shoulder next to Alex’s.

 

* * *

 

Three dead.

Thirty two injured.

Someone murmured that it was a blessedly low number.

It’s too high. Far too high.

Three dead. That didn’t need to be. The news is blasting away. The DEO has released a statement on who blew the bomb. Everyone’s in uproar as the truth leaks out. Cadmus framing aliens, the master plan to cast aliens in a bad light.

There are people claiming it was a necessary step. Some claiming the government is covering up the truth: aliens were behind it all, and this was just a convenient lie.

Hours have passed since the bomb and everything’s still blowing up.

And something is itching at Kara’s skin.

Something familiar but not, something she can’t quite put her finger on.

But beyond it all, she’s tired. And frustrated.

She’s helped pull everyone from the rubble, slack limbs swinging in her arms, strong limbs pushing at her, voices sobbing or silent. She’s helped put the fire out, she’s flown over the city to help put out metaphorical fires. She’s back at the scene of the bomb now, the entire building still smoking and wondering, really, if she’s ever going to make the difference she knows she’s able to.

“Supergirl.” Kara blinks, clenches her jaw. Rolling her shoulders, she looks at Alex, smudges of ash on her cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. Flashing lights are everywhere and Kara just wants to take off. She’s done her part. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Kara’s voice is too tight, but she can’t stop it. She doesn’t want to think back to the way she broke down just hours ago in Maggie’s hospital room, the weakness of everything she’s feeling clawing at her chest to come out, Alex’s broken look, the dawning realisation on her face. 

“Okay.” And Alex doesn’t sound like she believes her, and Kara looks away, back to the red and blue flashing over the scene. “The place Lillian took Lena is cordoned off, we’ll sweep it properly tomorrow. The tech has been taken, and Lex has been secured—he’s currently been moved to another prison, the personal will be personally background checked by J’onn.”

“How the hell did he even have the ability to sway a guard?” Kara asks.

“We’re investigating.” There’s caution in Alex’s voice, at something in Kara’s tone or just at the situation in general, Kara doesn’t know. “Lena’s back at her apartment, I dropped her there myself.”

Kara whips her head around, her curls flying around her face and she makes eye contact with Alex for the first time. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine.” Relief blossoms. “Or as fine as can be. I debriefed her myself.” Alex swallows. “Kara—the DEO needs you to check in now. Debrief what happened before I arrived. And the aftermath of the bomb.”

Three dead. Thirty two injured.

“Alex, it's three in morning.”

Alex’s eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t think I know that? Not all of us have Kryptonian physiology.”

“Exactly,” Kara snaps.

Alex’s eyebrows shoot even higher. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. I just—I want to go home.”

“J’onn called us in.”

Kara looks straight up at the sky, still a little smokey, the stars just breaking through at some points. “I don’t care. I’m going home.”

And she shoots upwards before Alex can stop her.

It doesn’t stop Kara from hearing the call of her name, followed by an exasperated sigh.

So Kara just shoots higher, until her toes dip into clouds but above her is just crystal clear sky. That feeling is still rippling along her skin and she shuts her eyes, remembers, in flashes, Lillian and her arrogance, Lex and his uncaring attitude. The plan B Kara doesn’t understand. How badly she’d wanted, for just a second, to hurt Lillian. How badly that feeling is rooted now, even more than that moment.

Lena, tied up.

Lena, with chafed wrists.

Lena, kidnapped and who Kara had wanted to turn the world inside out to search for.

The world suddenly seems so small, and Kara so big in it from up here.

She drops quickly, lands in her apartment and pulls off her suit and puts on clothes, then shoots out her window, too uncaring, too fast. Seconds pass, and she’s at Lena’s building, buzzing in, being allowed up.

Lena buzzed her in, but she still looks surprised to see her. She’s changed, dressed in soft black leggings and a soft sweater. Everything about her looks soft, but the sleeve of her sweater slips down as she holds the door open and just looks at Kara and Kara can see the raw skin, the way it’s purpled in places. Her eyes narrow on it, and Lena drops her hand and shakes it subtly so the sleeve falls back down.

“Kara.”

“Alex let me know a little about what happened. I thought I’d…”

Lena nods, like she expected nothing else.

Kara doesn’t know what she’s doing there, until she’s stepping into Lena’s space, her hands slipping into her hair and her lips brushing over Lena’s none to gently. It’s everything she wanted without realising she did.

She wanted Lena. To feel she is okay, that she’s breathing, that her mother didn’t get too much inside her head.

Lena’s fingers bite into her back and she pushes the door shut with one hand, then wraps that arm around Kara’s shoulder, pulling her in harder, their bodies flush. Each contact is firm, tugs at something in Kara’s chest, makes something rear up inside her. Something possessive.

“You wanted to end this.” Lena gasps out, pulling back so her forehead is pressed to Kara’s, her breath warm over Kara’s skin. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Kara ended this for reasons that make no sense right now, nothing makes sense. Instead she nods and steps back into Lena, focussed on one thing. Lena’s palm glides over the small of Kara’s back, over her hip, rests against her stomach until her fingers curl into material and tug Kara in even closer.

Kara ended this because she was feeling too much and she wants to slap herself for being so weak—she’s always weak. She licks into Lena’s mouth, fingers plucking her sweater up and Lena raises her arms, lets Kara yank it off before she’s tearing at Kara’s shirt, buttons popping. Her lips are on Kara’s neck, teeth biting and Kara gasps out.

“Harder.” Because she can’t feel it properly, she never can, so Lena bites ever harder and Kara can _just_ feel it. She hisses and Lena’s hips buck against her own at the sound, Kara grasping at them, fingers guiding her to do it again. And again.

All softness is gone and they fall onto the bed, pants kicked off and Lena is all skin. Skin that has a bruise on the arm from rough handling, one on her side against her ribs, and anger’s burning in Kara’s veins. She pauses over her, Lena all heaving breaths and flushed skin and wanting eyes, hooded and dark and Kara wants to fly back over and break something in Lillian for everything she’s done to Lena. Wants to break something for messing with something that’s _Kara’s._ Those two bruises are stark against such pale skin and have left their mark on Lena, a reminder to her of all the things her mother’s done to her.

But then Lena wraps her legs around Kara’s waist and yanks her down, her breath hot and wet in Kara’s ear. “Make me feel something else, then.”

Like she knows what Kara was thinking.

“Not so gentle.” Is the next thing gasped into her ear and relief explodes in Kara’s chest because she doesn’t want gentle, either.

Some part of her wants Lena to be hers, and that’s never been a feeling she knew she had.

And Lillian and Cadmus are forgotten completely in the sweat slicked skin of Lena’s back, the slope of her shoulder where Kara can bite as Lena throws her head back, hair wild around her head. Lena’s on top of her and Kara hands grips her thighs and the other moves and Lena’s hips move with it and they both need something from the other and here, like this, Kara feels like a god.

 

* * *

 

Lena wakes up to an empty bed. To sore muscles and a smattering of bruises she welcomes after the two she noticed the night before in the shower. Left on her skin in such a different manner. The night before could almost be a dream, if not for all that, for the ache between her legs, the sticky feeling of her skin. The way she can smell Kara all over her. Smell them all over herself.

It definitely wasn’t a dream.

What happened before Kara feels like a nightmare. Something she made up in her head. And, really, it’ll be easier for her if she just shoves it all into that box she’s been so good at using and leaving it there.

Swallowing, she rolls onto her back, tugging the sheet up over her chest. She sucks in a breath.

Patterns are dotted all over the ceiling. Faint wear and tear. On sleepless nights she’s always imagined them in constellations, maps to other places.

Now she just sees a mess.

She drops her arm over her eyes.

Last night with Kara was different, and she knows the obviousness of _why_. It was harder, rougher, _more_. It’s the more _what_ she doesn’t understand like she should. It’s like she’s thinking of a word, and it’s on the tip of her tongue but she can’t quite remember it.

It shouldn’t have happened. Kara made it clear she wanted this to stop, and they were just finding their way to some shaky semblance of friendship again. But after getting back to her apartment, with Lex’s manic eye, her mother’s cold voice, the news of the bomb that killed people, all running through her head, need was pounding through her. And when Kara showed up wild eyed and needy at Lena’s door, there was no way she could refuse. Not with the same need coursing through her system.

Kara interrupted all the panic flooding her veins and the questions of what her family were doing and the relief was obvious in Lena’s desperate fingers, the way she’d needed more and more from Kara.

And Kara gave it.

Then left while Lena was asleep.

Again.

But something feels different this time. Something in the look in Kara’s eye, the grasp of her fingers.

Lena’s arm falls away and she squints at the explosion of light.

Kara came around after hearing what happened to Lena.

With desperation in her kiss, with something _different_.

Could Kara be feeling something?

Lena doesn’t blink for what feels like minutes, her breath caught in her chest.

Did Kara hear Lena was in trouble, then safe, and her first thought was to come and see Lena in person? To actually feel she was okay?

She still hasn’t blinked, nor has she sucked in a breath.

That can’t be it.

She can’t let herself think it. Not after realising how hopelessly in love she is with Kara and Kara ending everything.

She whips the sheet away and gets up.

 

* * *

 

Feeling like she’s back to last month, and the months before it, is not a nice feeling.

“What do you mean?”

Alex slumps in her chair, her feet up on Maggie’s medical bay bed and pouts at her girlfriend. She doesn’t even care that she looks pathetic. She hasn’t really slept and she’s tired and feels a little pathetic, anyway. “What do you mean, what do I mean?”

Maggie rolls her eyes, then winces as it clearly hurts her head a little. She’s still too pale, but much more alert than the night before “How do you feel like everything’s like the last few months?”

“Kara’s blocking me out.”

Maggie pushes herself up on her elbows and squints at her. The look goes on for too long and Alex squirms under it.

“What?”

“Alex, she actually opened up last night. Like, in a big way. She probably just needs some time to process that.”

Alex gnaws her lip for a second. “I’m just… I’m worried about her. Again. Still? She didn’t come for her debrief last night, she just flew away and now I’ve not heard from her.”

“Didn’t someone in the DEO get in contact with her to send her to that bank robbery she’s dealing with right now?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So she’s alive, she’s fine. I think she just…needs some time. I don’t think she really _meant_ to let all that out last night and—well, you know how it is? Sometimes when it takes that breaking point to make you start talking, you don’t even realise yourself what you were feeling.”

Alex pulls her feet down and slumps forward, crossing her arms on the edge of the bed and resting her chin on top of them, looking up at Maggie, who gives her a soft little smile. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think she knew she felt all that, either.” Maggie’s fingers run through her hair, just once. “Just give her the morning, at least.”

Alex heaves a sigh. “Fine.” She quirks her lips up. “How do you figure all that out with a concussion?”

“Super brain.”

“Clearly.” Alex straighten up. “Now, what are you craving that I can bring you that the nurses would be _really_ unimpressed with?”

Maggie’s entire face lights up. “Something that’s chocolatey. And buttery. And a giant coffee.”

“Done.”

 

* * *

 

It’s hours later at work, in long sleeves that hang the right way and eating a salad at her desk, that Lena really feels the uncertainty that has settled in her belly, low and deep. Security has kept the press at bay all morning, her attorney has called five times and apparently her mother is refusing to say a word to anyone, and Lex has been moved and is grinning like he knows a secret.

She wishes no one told her that part.

And Lena just keeps flashing back to last night, to the feel of Kara’s tongue in her mouth, her teeth on her collarbone. To the touch of her that Lena thought she was never going to have again. Something she wasn’t letting herself even think of again.

Something she ran from in the bathroom in the bar but couldn’t turn away when it was standing right in front of her.

She’s sent three messages to Kara, but gets none back.

They need to talk. To confront all of this. Especially after last night. But also after the bathroom, where they both hovered over something neither could leap into and Kara had tears on her cheeks and Lena had left.

They need to talk.

So she sends another text, not caring how it looks at this point.

Then Supergirl is on Lena’s TV screen and she turns up the volume and wonders when she’ll get to say thank you. Again. She’s always saying thank you to Supergirl. She stabs at a piece of carrot and chews as she watches.

The reporter is all put together perfectly, not a hair out of place. In the back ground, a bank, a police car, people dressed all in black being put into the back. “A bank robbery thwarted once again, Supergirl. But everyone’s really wondering—what are your thoughts on the occurrences last night? On Cadmus and the ultimate plot to frame aliens for terrorism?” The reporter asks it smoothly, as if it’s not a personal attack on Supergirl, on everything she stands for.

Supergirl turns straight to the camera, eyes blazing. The sun beats down on her, red and hot and Lena stops mid-chew. “I think they were really starting to underestimate the power that we hold.” Lena swallows, the carrot scraping down her throat. “I think that, really, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for the citizens of this city to remember just how powerful we are.” Supergirl almost smirks and Lena slowly lowers her fork back down to her desk. “How powerful _I_ am.”

And she takes off, the camera jolting as the cameraperson tries to follow her.

Lena pauses the playback on the TV screen and leans back into her chair.

“What the hell was that?” she mutters out loud.

And then her door is being pushed open and Kara Danvers is walking in in pants that are criminally tight and hair up in a way that shows off her neck that simply makes Lena want to bite it. She’s in a sleeveless shirt and her arms are on perfect display and she desperately tries to stop her eyes from falling to where it gapes open.

“K-Kara.”

Lena stands up and there’s something in the way that Kara walks forward that leaves a swoop, low in Lena’s belly. It’s almost predatory, her legs extra long in… Lena actually _gulps_ as her gaze drops down to heels that are higher than she’d ever be able to hope to walk in. Her gaze goes back up and Kara smirks in a way that is pure deja vu.

“Lena.” She cocks her head as she stops across the desk. “Was that three messages from you? Or four?” Kara tuts, and Lena’s mouth goes dry. “Not very good at playing hard to get.” She rests her fingertips on the desk and takes slow, measured steps as she walks around it. All Lena can do is stand there, watching.

Wondering why the words don’t sound playful, but rather hurtful. Heat creeps up her neck. “Kara. Are you okay?”

Kara pauses, fingertips still resting on the desk, her careful steps only having taken her to the side. She gives a soft chuckle. “Why does everyone keep asking me that today? I’ve never felt better. Especially,” that smirk is back, “after last night? Five times?”

The heat is on Lena’s cheeks and nothing is flirty or fun about this. There’s something cool in Kara’s eyes. Last night had felt different, possessive and needy and desperate in a way that before had never felt—something Lena wouldn’t think could be possible, given some of the previous times. But there’d been something in it, something good, too.

But this? This feels off. Wrong.

“Yes, well.” Lena swallows. She has no idea what to say.

“And again, those messages.” Kara laughs, two more steps bringing her around Lena’s side of the desk, and Lena turns, arms crossing over her chest as only a few feet separate them. “You could at least pretend to hide it, Lena.”

“Hide what?”

Kara leans forward, her face so close Lena could kiss her. But she stays stock still. “All of those big feelings you’re having.”

And then Kara’s phone is chiming and she’s pulling it out of her bag and pouting at the screen. “No fun. Do I get no fun today?” And then she’s walking away and Lena is just staring after her, wondering if this is some kind of weird new game and why all it’s done is leave unease rippling in her stomach.

“Kara.”

Kara sighs and turns back. “Yes?”

That sigh hurt most of all.

“I, uh, need to talk to Supergirl. If you wouldn’t mind helping?”

A slow grin curls up Kara’s lips and Lena almost feels relieved at the sight of it. “Well that would be fun.”

And she leaves, with Lena having zero idea of whether or not she’s going to pass on the message.

Her seat is already cold when she sits down, and Lena just blinks at her tv screen, the empty sky still there where Supergirl had disappeared up to.

What is going on?

 

* * *

 

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, J’onn.” Alex throws her arms up and leans back against his desk. “I’ve messaged her eight times.”

In her defence, six of those eight times were before Maggie convinced her to give Kara some space again, and the other two work DEO related.

“Did she go into work?” he asks.

“James said yes, but he just saw her for a second.”

J’onn’s arms are crossed and he stares through his glass wall to watch the members of the DEO scurrying around. “She didn’t come for her briefing, she turned her phone off.”

Alex shrugged. “I think…she and Lena Luthor are close. Maybe she checked on her.”

“This still isn’t like her.”

“It isn’t. But we all know that Kara’s been…off.” They share a look that makes Alex’s chest ache.

And he wasn’t even there for Kara’s almost breakdown the day before, her words echoing in the room and her face so shattered that Alex had felt her heart shatter right along with it. She’ll be gone. Those words, the resonation they’d left behind, as Alex had watched her fall apart. As Alex realised just how much she’s missed, all this time. The sight of her with her hand clutching that crest, sucking in a breath like she couldn’t breathe. As she let herself say things she held back and they tore out her throat like a bad dream.

Alex should have pushed her harder to come in for the debriefing. But she’s been afraid to push so much the last few months it’s become a habit impossible to break.

Kara needs to answer her messages. Worry is starting to overcome Alex’s sense.

“How’s Maggie?”

Alex blinks, thrown for a second at the change of topic. “She’s, she’s okay. She’s going to be discharged home today. If I can, I’d like to leave early and go with her?”

To their apartment. That they share. Where Alex can cook them both dinner and hover without a nurse glaring at her or being pulled away to work.

He gives a nod. “If there are no disasters, sure.”

Alex gives him a tight nod. “I sent the team to sweep the space they held Lena in last night. We should have a report back soon.”

“Good job.”

“Uh—boss type people?” Winn hovers at the door. “Have you seen the news?”

“No,” they answer at the same time.

“Well, I think you should. Come with me.”

And he turns, without a single joke being cracked. Alex and J’onn throw each other another look and follow him out, heading into the main room and pausing in front of one of the monitors Winn has a news segment paused on. Agents stand around, murmuring to each other. Winn doesn’t even look at them before he hits play,

It’s about thirty seconds of footage. Nothing more.

And it’s enough to make Alex’s blood run cold.

“J’onn—” Alex wants to be sick.

“I saw it.”

“We need to get her in here.”

“And just how do we do that? I suspect she’s avoiding us for a reason.”

And that just makes Alex’s blood run even colder.

“J’onn—last night…the bomb exploded, and she didn’t go after it immediately.” How is Alex just getting this now? “The bomb went off with civilians present and her first reaction was to go after Lillian Luthor, not the bomb. I—how did I miss this?”

Because Kara hasn’t been herself for so long.

Silence, for a long second.

“Alex—go join the team sweeping the room—confirm this. I think we all know how this happened.” J’onn’s brow is so furrowed Alex thinks it could be folding in on itself. “But it could be something else.”

It has to be, because the alternative is something they should all be scared about.

“She went for those she felt made her weak, last time.” J’onn looks right at her as he says it. “Who is that this time around?”

Alex sucks in a breath, grabs her gun, and makes a beeline for transport.

Please let them be wrong.

She gets there too fast, speeds the entire way. The room is stripped and she spins in place, the agents and tech people there giving her a weird look.

But, of course they aren’t wrong.

Someone’s just uncovering it, right at the entrance, glowing red and hidden enough to not be seen but still expose.

“Fuck.”

 

* * *

 

Gold and orange and red light is streaming over the balcony and Lena stands against the rail, looking up at the sky and unable to lose the feeling of unease that hasn’t left her stomach all day. She hasn’t messaged Kara again. She hasn’t done a lot bu work and try to ignore the feeling of dread. And now the city is spread out in front of her, lights starting to turn on and unrest rippling all over it.

She doesn’t even jump when she hears the soft thump of boot soles hitting the balcony behind her. She turns around, resting her palms on the railing behind her and leaning back against it. Supergirl is bathed in the light, arms across her chest.

She wonders if maybe she shouldn’t have asked to see her, after that interview she watched.

“Supergirl. Kara got in touch with you?”

That same smirk, the one from the news, is on her lips. And Lena grasps the rail just a little tighter—that news segment is heavy in her mind. “She did.”

“Thank you, for coming. I just—I wanted to thank you. For last night. For—saving me, again.” Lena gives a small embarrassed laugh.

Supergirl just keeps looking at her, and that sunset is almost blood red now, it’s like it’s glinting off her skin. When she blinks, it’s like it’s in a crack of her cheeks and then that’s gone and Lena wonders if she’s seeing things.

“How many times is that I’ve saved your life now?”

There’s no playful tone in her voice and Lena straightens, tongue running over her lip as she thinks of what to say. “Many, I think. It’s why I owe you my thanks.”

Supergirl ignores that and steps in closer. “And just why did your mother take you, Lena? Just why did Lex want you there?”

Lena blinks.

Supergirl steps even closer. “Did they think they could sway you over?” Even closer, and Lena feels trapped against the railing. “Were you working with them the entire time?” Her voice is low as she leans close, as if they’re going to share a secret.

Lena reals back as if slapped. “What? No.”

“They must have thought they could sway you somehow.”

And Lena can’t say anything to that, because apparently they had.

“Little Lena Luthor.” And any trace of the Supergirl Lena knows is gone from her tone, another thrill of deja vu running up her spine and something is starting to click. “So in need of validation, her own mother thinks she’ll throw away her ideals for just a little taste of it. So desperate for friendship. So desperate for love.” Supergirl’s lips twist, a sneer Lena didn’t know they could hold renting them. “So gullible, so desperate for your mother’s love, you fell for Rhea. For her false claims. For her lies to take Mon-el away." Pink is slashed over Supergirl’s cheeks, an angry blotch, it cracks her tone at the last word of that sentence. There’s a darkness in her eye. That dread is like a weight, pulling Lena down. “You even fell for my lies. You really haven’t guessed how much you’ve been played for a fool? Did you really need to pretend you had two friends in this writhing, soul sucking city?” She’s flown two feet off the ground as she’s spoken, as if her anger, her disgust has boughed her upwards.

Something hollow has settled in Lena’s stomach. Her heart pounds, echoing in her ears. Supergirl drops to the ground again, her boots thudding and landing right in Lena’s space, millimetres between them. Warmth radiates off her and that twist to her lips is cruel. Callous.

And, damn it, Lena suddenly gets it.

That blue in her eyes. That scar over her eyebrow.

The smell of her hair.

The smirks, the tones from today.

Kara’s behaviour, Supergirl’s now.

“I’ve been lying to you all along,” Supergirl’s voice is mockingly patient. “Not that it was hard. So stupid.” Her fingertips trace down Lena’s cheek and Lena’s lip trembles; she can’t even duck away, as much as she wants to. “So eager to believe it.”

And there it is.

“Kara.” The name slips out like a whisper.  A prayer. A pleading tone. Her hands hurt where she grips the railing to stop them from shaking.

Fingers grasp at Lena’s chin. Not gently. Lips graze hers as Kara speaks, and Lena knows her own eyes are shimmering wet, heat crawling up her neck, shame in her belly.

“Oh.” That coo from Kara’s mouth is a contrast to the grip of her fingers, the scorn in her eyes. To try and make it go way, Lena closes her own. But that just makes her more hyper aware that of course this is Kara. The smell of her. The taste of her breath. “Oh, Lena. Did you finally just get it?”

Lena swallows, the motion doing nothing to push down the gasp rising in her throat. As lips press to hers, Kara’s kiss, but not, a hot tear slides down her cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to yell at me in the comments (comments feed writer's souls) or [over where I tumble, where I also have a bunch of other short stories under the tag "ramblings"](http://gabsrambles.tumblr.com/)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, RIGHT?!  
> I did try to warn you.  
> PS your comments give me life

Alex has known fear.

The pounding of her heart, the way adrenalin hits her cells so hard she could almost gasp from it. The rise of goosebumps along her arms, the fine hairs on her neck standing up and sending a shiver down her spine. She’s thought Maggie could die, she’s thought her sister could. She’s thought the whole world was going to go _boom_.

Danger is something she faces daily, and when it comes to herself, she runs head first into it with barely any of the symptoms that make her think of fear. It’s not that she doesn’t feel it, but she doesn’t _care_ she feels it.

When she cares? When she notices that unease, that hammer of her heart against her ribs? That dread that floods her system?

It’s when it’s for someone else, someone she loves.

And right now, she’s terrified _for_ Kara.

The elevator is too slow, and it’s at the top floor, descending at a snails pace. She bounces on her heels in the lobby, glares at the numbers, at the way they flicker as if stuck in the ice age.

“Fuck it.”

The gun at her side is bigger than she usually likes, left over from Max’s technology—but she’d lug a tank up the stairs if it meant she could get to Kara. Teams are scouring the city even as her palms smack against the door that leads to the stair access and she starts to pound up the steps. Every team carries guns that had been locked away for an emergency, for this thing they hoped would never happen again, _but just in case._ They have smaller versions, streamlined, upgraded. Alex took this one because it worked last time and she’ll be damned if she’s taking risks with it now.

That dread is heavy in her belly, spreading to her limbs.

That fear? It’s like ice in her veins

Three floors.

Her feet spark a pattern.

_She went for those she felt made her weak, last time. Who is that this time around?_

Alex hasn’t seen Kara all day. No one has. James, briefly that morning at work. But that’s all.

She’s sweating, now. A fine sheen of it on her face, and she clasps the gun to her front, elbows swinging as she climbs the stairs harder, pushes her muscles even more.

It was slow, last time. The signs obvious in hindsight.

“Fucking,” she’s almost weezing, “hindsight.”

They picked up on it far faster, this time.

Still too late.

Kara’s well under the effects.

“Fuck—” Alex is up ten floors and climbing “—ing—” she’s taking the steps two at a time but it’s too slow “—red—” she’s getting a stitch “—krypto—” her shoulder hits the door to the level she wants and she flies through it “nite!”

People dodge out her way.

The last time around, it took far longer than what has past now for violence to start. For Kara to lose herself so deeply.

But the cutting words? The laying bare every small, angry part of herself?

That started very quickly.

And Alex is so terrified that Kara, who is already in a bad place, is going to tear her own life apart under the influence of red kryptonite. Burn it to the ground, and then Alex will have to watch her face break as she comes to, just like last time, and Alex doesn’t know if she has the strength to do that.

She’s seen her sister break too many times.

And all thanks to—“Fucking Luthors!”

She charges past the receptionist’s desk, “Not Lena!” she yells over her shoulder, the receptionist’s eyes wide and her hand reaching for the phone. Alex just flashes her badge at her.

Her shoulder slams into the Lena’s office door and her hand twists the knob at the same time, the result being that she careens through and uses her momentum to run right at the balcony door, eyes having swept the room immediately and seen it empty. Her reflexes are sharp, but not sharp enough, as a flash of red and blue shoots upwards off the balcony.

But not before Kara twisted her head around, cracks of red glowing from her cheeks, and she smirked at Alex over her shoulder.

Fucking. Red. Kryptonite.

Kara’s left behind a gust of wind, again, but this time it’s not shifting Alex’s hair, but Lena Luthor is leaning with her back against the railing, knuckles white where she grasps the metal and her jaw is set so tight Alex is worried she might crack a tooth. She slows as she jogs through the door to the balcony and stops a few metres from Lena, staring up at the sky, chest heaving.

“Damn it.”

The sky is washed in sunset, orange and red, twilight creeping over it all.

Alex failed.

She swallows and pulls the gun in tighter against her stomach, turning to look at Lena.

She swallows again.

That jaw is still set just as tight, a muscle clenching in Lena’s neck. In this light, she’s pale, almost glowing.

“Lena?”

Lena’s gaze lifts, and Alex almost recoils from the look in her eye. Red-rimmed. Pained. Hard.

“Alex.” Lena straightens her shoulders, but doesn’t let go of the rail. “We seem to be meeting a lot lately.”

Alex can’t even bring herself to smile.

She’d seen how close Kara had been standing to Lena. Just _how_ had Kara gone after Lena? There are limitless options, every person has every kind of horrible thought, and the red kryptonite could have made Kara dip into any number of them. Was it about the invention of the device that took away Mon-el? Lena’s part in bringing the Daxomites here in the first place? Her existence as a Luthor? Something far more mundane yet equally as painful? Kara is an observant friend, she would know most of the insecurities Lena has.

They’d been standing _so_ close.

Was Kara threatening her?

“Are you hurt?” Alex finally asks.

Lena actually laughs, a hollow sound. “No.”

It’s a lie, the taste of it turns the air between them acrid, but Alex lets her have it. Because maybe she should have specified she hadn’t just meant physically.

And her gut was right, Lena was exactly who Kara went for first.

“Lena… Supergirl is…not herself.”

That’s one way to put it.

Lena looks like that is exactly what she wants to say. Instead, she just nods, almost thoughtful.

“So.” Lena’s lips quirk, and there’s something painful in it. “Kara is Supergirl.”

Alex’s entire body freezes. The air is gone from her lungs and she just stares straight at Lena.

Well that was one way to go gunning for your best friend. Point out you’ve been lying to them the entire time and, if Alex understands Kara under red kryptonite like she thinks she does, make out they were an utter idiot for believing otherwise. Really layer on the betrayal aspect, too. Needle in the hurt.

Lena blinks at her. “I really should have figured that out much sooner.”

Her voice is just so flat.

“Lena.” They aren’t close, Lena and Alex. Alex spent a long time unsure if they could even trust her. But Kara trusts her. And now Alex finds her voice breaking over the woman’s name because this is not fair. Not fair on the woman who was kidnapped by her own family and bound to a chair that left chafe marks on her wrists and who knows what scars across her heart. Who was raised by someone like Lillian Luthor and close to Lex before he became what he is today, and who put multiple hits on her life. Who, through all of this, is _good_ despite it all. Who has helped save the world on more than one occasion and who has been there for Kara when Alex couldn’t be, even if just because Kara didn’t want her. “You weren’t to know. Everything we designed was to keep her identity a secret.”

And Lena scoffs, still gripping those rails, and looks Alex right in the eye. It takes a lot to not wince away from it. The sun has dropped, so suddenly, leaving them in near darkness. “ _I_ wasn’t to know?” The look on her face is self depreciating, and Alex may not know her that well, but even she can tell that’s what that smile is. “ _I_ really should have, actually. I really am an—“

And she cuts herself off, looks away, and Alex wonders just how deep under her skin Kara got thanks to red kryptonite. Thanks to Lena’s own family.

“This isn’t _her_ , not really.” Alex shifts her weight and tries to catch Lena’s eye again. “There was something called red kryptonite where your mother was holding you. It—it poisons her, changes her brain chemistry. That person you just saw?” Alex stabs her hand out in the city in general and takes a step closer, conviction in her voice. She needs Lena and Kara to be okay in this, because she needs _Kara_ to be okay. “ _That_ is not Kara. It’s not Supergirl. But I _will_ get her back.”

All Lena does is give a nod.

“Lena, I’m really sorry, I have to go. I need to find her.” She grasps the gun up higher. “I need to find her, and fix this. But I want to take you somewhere safe first. She may come back.”

That eye contact again.

“Why? Why would she come back?”

Alex gives her a soft, sad smile. “Because you mean something to her.”

“Do I?”

The words are so soft, so disbelieving, that Alex almost thinks she didn’t really hear them. Lena pushes off the rail and walks past, shoulders straight and Alex bites her lip, turns, and follows her out.

That fear hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it’s getting worse.

She needs to find Kara.

 

* * *

 

There are forty nine imperfections on the walls of this room.

Water marks, scratches, smudges.

It sounds like a lot, but that’s actually quite a small number. And Lena would know.

Any time she’s needed to disappear into herself, even just a little, she’s counted things. Tiles, bricks, rows, objects. But this room is bare. A steel table her hands are splayed over, fog spreading from her clammy fingers, her reflection almost visible in it, it’s so polished. The smudge her handprints will leave behind is almost a satisfying thought. There’re two other chairs around the table and a door to her right with a large window on it.

She’s not a prisoner.

Lena takes a deep breath in, holds it, then lets it out slowly.

There are no cuffs on her wrists, and her sleeves cover the marks left behind from when their last was.

Protection. That’s why she’s here.

She could get up and walk out that door.

Which is exactly what she wants to do.

Another deep breath.

She’s out of things to count. The imperfections, she’s counted fifteen times. The walls are pure white. The floor smooth grey. The DEO keeps things clean.

Another breath.

Then another.

She swallows, and stares at the glass of water Alex left behind. Alex, who is Supergirl’s sister.

Because Supergirl and Kara are the same person.

She squeezes her eyes shut, but that’s a huge mistake, because it just throws her back to _then_. Just an hour or so ago. That’s all, and Lena’s fingertips drag over metal as she balls her hands into fists, her nails biting into her palms, because it’s like she’s stuck there, now. An hour of focussing on anything else, and she shuts her eyes for a second and she’s there.

She _is_ weak.

There with Kara’s lips on hers and the rail grasped between her hands, the only thing keeping her centred because nothing about this is how it should be. Kara words were cruel and harsh, her kiss still somehow just a brush of her lips, even as her fingers clasped Lena’s chin and held her there.

Not that Lena was trying to move.

Fight or flight?

Apparently Lena just went for frozen.

Kara pulled back and her cheeks were _red,_ her eyes shimmering that colour for a second, too. And Lena knew, deep in her gut, that something was wrong but it didn’t stop the next words Kara said feeling like a slap.

“You always want me,” she smirked. “You’re the entire reason Rhea was able to invade, and you still think to be close to me.” She huffed a laugh, her breath washing over Lena’s lips. “Arrogant? Or idiotic?”

In that DEO room, Lena’s hands squeeze tighter and her nails actually hurt now. The flash of pain lets her open her eyes and tug herself back to the present.

That was when Alex had ran through the door, anyway. There wasn’t anything more to fall into, in that memory. Kara had just laughed and said, “Cavalry’s here. I’ll see you.”

And gone.

There’s a buzzing in this room.

And Lena needs to focus on that.

Anything but the replay of scorn in Kara’s eyes. The flash of anger in her tone. The _words_.

How had Lena thought Kara didn’t think any of that? How had Lena even thought she could be close to her, after everything Lena had done to her? It was like Kara knew exactly what to lay bare. Every thing Lena had let keep her up at night, coming from Kara’s lips.

And how could she have done that, unless Kara, deep down, thought that too?

The door opens, loud in the silence of the room, and Lena drops her hands into her lap and turns to face whoever just walked in.

Someone she doesn’t recognise brings in some food, offers her a small smile. “Danvers asked me to make sure you had what you need. Anything else you need?”

“Uh—thanks. I just want to know when I can home.”

They shrug. “When Danvers calls and gives the clear. There’s no news just yet.”

Lena offers a small smile. “Thanks.”

And they go.

And she’s back to the buzzing silence and the waiting.

There’s a thump somewhere and Lena blinks down at the plate with a sandwich on it. Her stomach rolls just at the thought of it. There’s another thump, then another.

Then a bang.

And a scream.

Lena stands up and walks so the table is between her and the door.

A crash. Shattering glass.

Her hands are shaking.

Then the door is ripped of its hinges and Kara is in the doorframe.

It’s not like the heroic entrance last night.

It’s cold and hard. Kara drops the door behind her and the metal clangs on the floor. She’s dressed head to toe in black, her eyes heavy and dark.

It would be hot, if it wasn’t so terrifying.

That red that Lena noticed before doesn’t fade this time. It throbs in her cheeks, like it’s moving through her veins.

“Lena.” And Kara cocks her head. “We didn’t get to finish our chat.”

“Kara.”

And Lena doesn’t know what else to say.

“No time.”

And then Kara has flashed towards her, grabbed her, and they’re out the door, down the hallway and flying out a window, leaving behind flickering lights and people passed out in the hallway that Lena can only hope aren’t dead.

 

* * *

 

“What the fuck do you _mean_ Supergirl appeared at the DEO, got straight through, and took Lena Luthor without anyone using the specially provided weapons that could _stop_ her?”

The agent in front of her looks like he’s about to wet himself and Alex takes a long, deep breath in and tried to remember not to decapitate anyone.

“Uh—that. That is, uh, what I mean. Exactly that.”

This agent has to be, like, twelve.

Alex stands in the control room, surrounded by sparking equipment and groaning team members. No casualties, med bay is a little full.

But Lena is gone and Kara is losing her control. It’s starting, a downward spiral. If she didn’t care that she hurt agents at the DEO? It’s not long until she stops caring if she hurts those she cares about, if she sees them as being in the way of what she wants to gain. Which, judging from last time, ended up being domination of the city.

Probably the world.

And she’d been about to kill Alex back then.

Alex presses her fingers to her temples. “Thank you, Agent. You’re dismissed. Go get checked out, if you need to.”

“I’m fine ma’am, but thank you ma’am.”

He scuttles off.

“Alex.” There’s a hand on her arm and she’d recognise it anywhere, even without the voice.

“J’onn.”

“We’ll get her.”

She lets her hands fall and turns to face him. “Two agents in here had the weapons to reverse it and she melted the guns with her laser vision.”

“We didn’t think she’d come here at all. Not since she knows we have the tech to stop her.”

“Which is why she isn’t coming anywhere near me—or you.”

“But she _did_ come here…”

Alex looks at him. “For Lena.”

“Why?”

“She sees her as a weakness. Right?”

He looks thoughtful for a moment. “Yes. So why come back for her? Why take her?”

“Around this time, last time, Kara started to spiral.” Alex bites her lip. “Become more violent.”

He looks around the room, still sparking, lights flickering, broken glass under their feet. “Well, that’s started.”

“So she’s probably wanting to make a point, soon. About her own power.”

Alex grabs the gun she only just put down for the first time since she picked it up hours before.

“I know where she’s gone.”

 

* * *

 

They land on a roof and Lena pushes herself away from Kara the second they do. She stumbles back slightly and here, in the darkness outside, the way red is laced through Kara’s skin is unmissable. It’s unearthly, alien, terrifying.

It’s everything her mother tried to say Supergirl is.

“Kara—listen to me—”

She’s stopped with an eye roll and a hand raised up to stop her mid-sentence. “Cut the spiel, I’ve heard it before. I definitely don’t need it from _you_.”

Lena takes a step back and Kara just watches her, head cocked, all in black and hair moving lazily around her face in a soft breeze.

So much for being at the DEO for protection.

“You know,” Kara speaks slowly, as if considering something, “despite it all—I can’t help but feel we’d make a pretty good team.”

Lena’s mouth snaps shut. That’s the last thing she expected to hear. “What?”

Kara smiles like she knew Lena wouldn’t get it, and folds her hands behind her back, leaning forward like she’s going to share a secret. “Come on, with your way with tech, and with my—well—” she chuckles and holds her hands out as if indicating to herself “—with me. We could rule this world, Lena.” She steps closer again, and there’s just a foot of space there, filled with a soft red glow, and Kara’s eyes, still blue in it all, still _hers_. Still achingly like the eyes that have stared at her over her desk and looked at her softly, drunkenly. Eyes that last night—God, last night. Kara would have been under this weird influence then, too. Lena’s stomach rolls over. “We could rule them _all_.”

And now Kara is talking about dominating the city, when just before she’d seen set on cracking into every single insecurity Lena has.

“No.”

Kara just laughs again and spins, walking over to look over the lights of the city. “No? You say no? Of everyone, Lena, you have to know they’re all cockroaches. They want an idol, something to worship.” Her chin juts up and she turns to look at Lena over her shoulder. “Who better than me? And if we can open more portals, we can go to other worlds.” The red flares and Lena’s heart hammers in her chest. “I lost my world, Lena. It was ripped from me thanks to my parents arrogance. But if we were to control them all?” Kara’s chest is almost heaving at the thought, her voice low. “No more weakness. No more feeling _useless_ and _alone_. No more of this human hideousness.” She clasps her hand over her chest like she can pull whatever feelings she’s referencing out of her chest and fling them away.

Lena can barely breathe her heart is racing so hard against her ribs.

Kara turns and in a blink is back in front of Lena, her smirk plastered on her lips. “Come on. I know there’s Luthor in there.” She cocks her head. “I know you’re tempted.”

It’s the red kryptonite, Lena knows this. She knows she knows she knows. Every hurtful thing that has come out of her mouth, and now this? This thought that Lena would _want_ to join her? That Lena really is, in her core, a Luthor?

Does Kara even know her?

“Let me tempt you even more.”

And then Kara is rising up and back and then she makes a fist and slams into the roof and is flying back up, grabbing Lena and flying her through it.

Lena ends up blinking in fluorescent light, surrounded by dust and rubble from the hole Kara made behind her. They’re in a hallway and an alarm is blaring and Kara spins, shooting a stream of laser into a box at the end of the hallway that cuts the alarm and then shooting laser at the metal door, then sending a puff of frigid air, cooling the melted metal and sealing the door.

She straightens and grins, “That’ll buy us some time.”

“For what?”

And Kara’s marching past her towards the opposite end of the hallway and Lena spins to follow her and stops dead.

A cell.

Just one.

And her mother, sitting on a bed and watching like she was waiting for them.

“For me, Lena. Obviously.”

Kara pulled her into the prison.

Lena just stands, yards back. She’s suddenly, just so very tired.

Kara puts a hand on a bar of the cell and stares at Lillian through the gaps. “Lillian Luthor.”

“Supergirl.” Lillian smirks. “Or, really, Kara Danvers.”

Kara’s eyes glow and Lena takes an involuntary step forward. “ _You_ don’t get to call me that.”

“Kara…”

Kara turns, eyes still glowing, and looks straight at Lena.

“Oh, but _she_ can?” Lillian narrows her eyes, just slightly. And Lena is ten again, and met with disapproval when she doesn’t even know what she did. “ See what you’ve gotten into bed with, Lena?”

Hen the bar is ripping away and Kara is holding is straight through the cell, the end of it pointed right at Lillian neck. Lillian stares steadily down it at Kara.

“Do you see now, Lena?” Lillian hisses. “Do you see? They are all the same.”

Slowly, Kara turns her head again to look at Lena, eyes still glowing as if ready to strike at anything. Anyone.

“I see what _you_ did to her, Mother.” Lena can barely look at Lillian.

“Pity,” Kara says. “I thought you would be on board, Lena.” She whips her head around to stare straight at Lillian. “And you? The biggest cockroach of them all. You think you’re above me? You think you can kidnap who you please and walk all over them. You think _you_ can take on _me_?” Kara’s voice is almost a hiss of power, and Lena can feel everything spinning out of control. She can almost see what will happen next, the violence Alex warned of. The uncontrollable spiral Kara is about to go down. Kara’s chin juts again, her eyes glowing. “What message will it send when you’re found dead in your cell?”

Her eyes glow even more.

“Kara!”

And just as her name tears from Lena’s lips, there’s a thump behind them. Kara and Lena spin at the same time as Alex steps out of J’onn’s hold, the gun in her arm already sending a stream of red that slams into Kara and sends her hard against the cell bars.

She falls to the ground, twitching, a red mist rising from her body to swirl into nothingness.

And all Lena can do is stand there as Alex runs to her side, Lillian sits down with a thump and, Lena is sure, let’s out a held breath that could be of relief.

Lying on the floor, Kara is out cold and Lena wonders if she can go home now.

 

* * *

 

The feeling of deja vu, coupled with deep regret, something sick to her stomach, is what Kara wakes up to.

She feels displaced, like her body isn’t her own and it all comes back in bits and pieces.

A feeling she’s had before. One she never wanted again.

Going to Lena again, after deciding to stop.

Not going near Alex, even as anger boiled in her blood at her sister, because she knew Alex would realise and stop her.

Revealing her identity to Lena.

Oh, Rao.

She gasps out a sob and squeezes her eyes closed even more, feels wet warmth splash down her cheeks.

Blaming Lena for Mon-el. For Rhea.

Trying to pull the Luthor out of her.

Taking Lena to kill her mother.

Wanting to take over this world, every world, if it meant she’d never feel like she has the last few months again.

Her chest almost cleaves in two, because of all of it, she can’t get rid of the look in Lena’s eye on that balcony.

It was hurt, yes. Broken. Pained.

But so much of it was resigned, as if she thought it all about herself anyway.

Kara sits up and finally opens her eyes, her hand clasped over her chest and her fingers digging in, again, and the room is bright and Alex is there, wrapping her arms around her and pulling her in as tight as she can.

All Kara can do is sob into Alex’s neck as a hand rakes through her hair.

“Alex.”

“Kara.”

And Alex’s voice beaks as much as Kara dies, so she just buries her face into her neck more.

“Where’s Lena?”

“Safe. Home. She—she asked to go home.”

Which is good, because Lena should be allowed to do whatever she wants to, even if every cell in Kara's body is telling her to go and see she's okay for herself.

But of course she won't be okay.

“It was like last time, Alex." Kara hiccoughs. "Everything. All of it. Every awful thing. Just—just there, and I couldn’t stop it…”

“I know. It wasn't your fault.”

And she pulls Kara in closer, because, Kara figures, Alex doesn’t know what else to do, and for the first time in far too long, Kara lets her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ahem* *changes chapter prediction AGAIN because I made a big ol' mess*


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments feed my soul, I swear. You all rock so much.  
> I know this has been a rough ride. I'm genuinely surprised with how many fellow angst lovers there are! Thanks for sticking with it, I hope the few chapters after this make it worth your while :)

The entire world keeps moving, like it didn’t stop that night. The apartment is quiet, dark, cased in shadows and Lena sits on her balcony, wrapped in a blanket, and stares out over the city. The bottle on the table is a quarter empty and she sips from the glass, one gulp, the amber liquid not really burning.

Everything is still happening.

She passed garbage trucks on the way home.

Clubs were open.

Late night diners.

Sirens. Laughter. Bright eyed people.

Lena takes another sip, the only thing burning is her eyes. She rarely blinks, just stares, and swallows, and occasionally sucks in a gulp of air, as if her body forgot to breath occasionally.

That’s how she feels, really. That moment of sucked in breath: like being dragged into air when your body had even forgotten it needed any, waters sloshing off and everything murky, not registering.

Another sip.

She’ll stay her until the sky starts to go orange. Then she’ll shower, wash off the panic and fear and exhaustion that clings to her clothes, in her hair, to her skin. She’ll go to the gym, have another, faster shower, then get a coffee, then go to work.

Like any other day.

Because it is anything day.

Even if everything feels like it’s pulling her under.

She sucks in a breath again, doesn’t blink. Stares at the same spot, then slowly looks up, to the muted stars in the sky and wonders, not for the first time, if Mon-el is out there.

And if it even matters.

The night is like a blur, a rushed blur of information. Too much of it. The things Kara thought, or is thinking, or thinks, thrown at her one after the other, some words contradicting others, her actions tearing a hole in Lena, deep in her chest.

Maybe she really is just a Luthor, if Kara Danvers, the best person Lena knows, thinks so.

If Supergirl, the world’s superhero, thinks so.

Because apparently, they’re the same person.

Another sip.

A painful blink.

They’re the same person, and Kara Danvers, her best friend, the person she’s in love with—not that that matters, Kara doesn’t even know, and that’s a relief, now—the person she’s slept with for months, didn’t trust her with that information.

She lied point blank, really.

Lena tilts her head back and watches the stars start to blur together.

Didn’t trust her with that information, but apparently trusts her to take over the universe with her.

Lena half snorts, a huff of air, and takes another sip.

 

* * *

 

Kara is fragile.

Almost tender, soft and easily bruised.

Which is an absurd thought to think about her Kryptonian sister, who can get thrown through buildings and walk through fire and lift a spaceship into space. Who can carry a bus on her back, and has saved the world on multiple occasions. Bullets just bounce right off of her.

But it’s true. She’s fragile, right now. Her emotions come off her in waves that Alex wants to tug her fingers through, gently, untangle and help her sort through.

Kara’s couch is soft under them, it engulfs them like it’s welcoming them back. Maggie is asleep at their place, and Alex will go home to her. Soon. But Maggie’s sleeping, under heavy painkillers, and Alex is just relieved that one of the women in her life can be helped with something as simple as a one off pill. Because Kara is aching and solid, and Alex once again has no idea how to help her.

Except, this time, Kara’s head is in Alex’s lap, and Alex is slowly running her fingers through her hair and the blanket in her lap is soaked because Kara hasn’t stopped crying. Constant tears, her eyes red rimmed and her look raw and, terribly, it’s a relief to see. Because months have passed in which Kara has been an impenetrable force that Alex _knew_ had this going on underneath, and seeing it, finally, is like breathing air after being held under water.

Her sister is hurting, but she’s showing it and letting Alex near her.

Kara’s voice is hoarse, scraped through.

“I know I avoided you because you would be able to stop it.” She’s speaking into Alex’s knee. “But part of me wanted to come to you, Alex, to hurt you.” The words are pressed into the blanket like it can take out the horrid taste of them.

Alex swallows, her fingers not stilling. “Kara. Everyone has horrible thoughts. Everyone thinks things and doesn’t act on them, because they know those things are either extreme, or wrong, or…whatever.”

“Not like this.” And Kara’s voice is tight, like it could shatter any moment.

“Tell me. Don’t let it fester.”

Kara pushes up and her eyes are the blue of ice, her cheeks splotchy and her face swollen. “I resented that you had Maggie. I—I wanted to torture you, for leaving me alone the last few months, for being in your bubble while I felt like, like I was being pulled to pieces. But Alex, I don’t really think that, I know it was me. I wouldn’t let you in, and you _never_ stopped trying—”

“I wanted you to go back to space.” Alex bites her lips and Kara stills at the blurted interruption. “Even when we got close as teens, there were times when this little voice in the back of my head told me everything would be easier if I just shoved you into a spaceship and shot you out into the stars. And after the last time you were exposed with red kryptonite?” Alex pushes Kara’s hair behind her ear. “You weren’t wrong, everything you said held an element of truth. But you also know how much I love you. And that you are my sister. We all have bad thoughts, Kara. You were just unfortunate to have yours bared to the world when the rest of us get to bury ours.”

Kara shakes her head. “I _tortured_ Lena. You—you have no idea just how badly I hurt her.”

“I do.” Alex cocks her head and smiles, tight lipped and small. “I can imagined, because you _get_ people. It’s how you knew how to hurt me last time, and how you knew this time it would kill me to think I was too self involved to really care that you were so sad.” Alex draws in a shuddering breath. “So I may not know, exactly, what you said to her—but I know that you would have known exactly how. Because, ironically, you wouldn’t have been able to unless you were the amazing friend that you are.”

Tears are splashing down Kara’s face and Alex wishes she could stop them. But another part of her is still relieved to see it, something, from Kara, after so many months of repression. “She’ll hate me.” A shuddering breath. “Because even beside that, if she can get over the horrible things I said… She knows I lied to her, about me.”

“She might understand. She should understand.”

“Lillian said she’d hate me. Being lied to.”

“Yes, because Lillian truly knows her daughter.” Alex can’t keep the scoff out of her voice.

Kara, eyes still red-rimmed, shrugs. “In this, I think she might. You didn’t—you didn’t see her face.”

And Alex doesn’t tell her that she did, Alex _did_ see her, moments after Kara told Lena. That’s slipped Kara’s mind, Alex walking in. But she did see, the way Lena wouldn’t let go of the rail, the scorn in her voice directed at herself.

Alex did see.

Because Kara went to Lena.

Multiple times.

“Kara?” Kara blinks at her, wide, wet eyes. “Why did you go get Lena from the DEO?”

And she actually rolls her eyes. “I wanted…” she sighs, as if angry at herself for what red kryptonite brought out in her. “I wanted to take over the world.” She mumbles it, almost sheepish at the cartoon villain sound it contains. “And I believed Lena could help me.”

Alex blinks.

Even under red kryptonite, even while hurting Lena as much as she could, Kara went back to her?

Holy shit fuck. Was Maggie right?

And if she was, Lena is going to have been hurt on so many other levels.

“You wanted Lena Luthor to help you with world domination?”

There’s a sentence Alex never thought she’d be saying to Kara.

“Pretty much. And, well—she tried to stop me from killing Lillian, and that’s when things start to get very…hazy. I think that’s when I got angry and really would have killed Lillian. And, I think, I would have killed Lena, because she wasn’t on my side, like, like with you the first time…I—Alex, what if you didn’t get there in time?”

Alex wraps her arm around her shoulder and tugs her back down. “That’ll never happen.”

And Kara sniffs and Alex’s head is still reeling because has her sister been sleeping with _Lena Luthor_ this entire time and Alex just _missed_ that? Unless it wasn’t sleeping with? Unless it was just feelings—is not an inappropriate time to questions Kara on this?

And Kara’s gone very still, suddenly.

“Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“I couldn’t stay away from Lena.”

“I know.”

“I—I need to see her.”

“I think give her tonight. Then try. But Kara—she may need more time than that.”

“I know.” Another sniff, her voice incredibly quiet. “Alex—I need to tell you something.”

“You’ve been sleeping with Lena.”

Kara sits up again, eyes comically wide. “How did you know?”

“Maggie kind of guessed. And I literally kind of just realised she was right?”

Kara blinks. “I—I just. Alex. I kept going to her. Even while under red kryptonite.”

“I know, Kara.”

“No—I mean. I’d ended it. I’d ended the whole thing because she deserved better and I was—am—a mess, and I thought it wasn’t what I wanted, and then as soon as I was exposed to red kryptonite I went back to see her, but also because I needed to. Like, I _had_ to see her.”

Kara is blinking so rapidly now it’s almost dizzying and Alex wonders if she need to tell Kara what Kara is clearly realising or if it’s better to let her get there alone.

“Alex. Red kryptonite doesn’t make me do things I don’t want to do. It brings out all those desires I repress and almost makes what I do based on things I don’t let myself want?”

“What was the first thing you did after you were exposed and left me high and dry when I told you the DEO wanted you in for a debrief after Lena was kidnapped and the bomb exploded?”

Kara’s cheeks are _pink_. “Went to Lena.”

“And how many times after that did you seek out Lena as the red kryptonite got stronger?”

“Three,” Kara whispers.

Alex just watches her.

“Alex.” She’s still whispering. “I think I’m in love with her.”

Alex almost wants to pat her arm, because could Kara have realised this at a worse time? “You think?”

“Oh. Oh.” Kara’s stopped blinking and is staring off over Alex’s shoulder. “Oh. No. Not I think. I _know_.”

Kara can be slow on the uptake, but once she gets there, she really gets there.

“I need to see her.”

And she’s up and standing and Alex wraps her fingers around Kara’s wrist and tugs her back to the sofa. Thankfully, she lets herself be pulled down. “No.”

“No?”

“She needs a bit of time. And Kara, so do you.”

Kara swallows, then nods. A pause, long and painful. “Alex. Rao. I really hurt her.”

“I know.”

And she lays back down, slowly, her head in Alex’s lap.

“This is a really big mess.”

“It is.”

“I hurt her. I lied to her. I said so many horrible things.” Her voice breaks, and Alex brings her fingers back to her hair. “She thinks I was, I was sleeping with her because I’m in love with Mon-el and wanted to forget.”

“You weren’t?”

Alex already knows she wasn’t. Kara’s break down in Maggie’s medic bay room was enough to show her that. But she thinks Kara needs to say it.

“I—I think a little bit, at the start. But it wasn’t…it wasn’t about Mon-el. I mean it was, but not…” Kara sucks in a breath and rubs her nose against Alex’s knee before she speaks again. “It was so clear, last night. What I was angry about. After being lost the last few months that clarity is almost a relief.”

A bonus to red kryptonite? No. There are no bonuses.

“You were angry everyone leaves. At your parents. Your planet. At…being alone.”

And it hurts, to say it. To think that Kara feels alone even with Alex.

“Yes.” And Kara chokes on the word, on the sob in her chest. “And Mon-el was, he was _something_ , from my life. From my life I thought was dead and gone. And he…he got it, Alex.”

“Got what?”

And Kara is whispering again. “What it means, to not be human. To be…to be alien, on this planet, and trying, every day, to fit in.”

“I know.” Because it hurts, but Alex knows anyway.

“Lena…helped. Everything felt…easier, with her.” She laughs, the sound strangled and wet. “How did I not realise how I felt sooner?”

“Because you were dealing with everything else you were feeling.”

“And now Lena may never want to speak to me again.” Kara is sobbing, the sound of it like shattering in her chest.

And Alex can’t even say she will, because Alex doesn’t know.

“I _hate_ Lillian and Lex.”

“Me too.”

That’s something Alex _can_ say.

Because there is nothing Alex hates more than someone fucking with Kara’s life so badly.

And soon, they need to talk about all of this more. They need to talk about everything Kara is feeling and what it means and maybe, they need to find someone Kara can see who can actually counsel her through this.

But for now, Alex runs her hands through Kara’s hair and Kara hiccoughs into her leg and that’s enough.

 

* * *

 

Waking up the day after red kryptonite feels like what Kara imagines waking up after a six day bender must feel like.

There’s a headache, and wincing because everything’s bright. That feeling that you’ve slept too much, but like you could sleep ten more hours heavy in your bones. Eyelids that feel like sandpaper. The memories that wash over you, one by one, enough to make you wince internally and pull the covers up over your head and whimper.

She moves through the morning like she’s wading through sludge. Cotton wool is stuffed into her brain and everything feels disconnected.

Recognisable now, though.

All red kryptonite did, besides make her burn a relationship that means more to her than she is willing to accept to the ground, was highlight the fact that Kara is depressed.

She sips her tea, elbows on her counter, and breathes in the steam rising.

Admitting it feels like swallowing an awful pill, too big, edges scraping down her throat. It grates against everything she’s always strived to be, her entire life.

It feels like failure, when she knows it’s not.

Red kryptonite pulled everything back, all the defences she’s piled high, the persona she hid behind, and left the guts of her feelings bare and exposed and she can’t deny it anymore.

When she sips her tea, the temperature is perfect and it settles in her stomach, warm and soothing and the feeling of it almost makes her cry.

Everything that’s been exposed is too much to deal with right now. She will though—deal with it. She needs to. There’s so much she needs to learn to live with.

But buried in it all is something that feels good. Something she didn’t expect. Something she can’t hide behind, but still something that makes her feel less numb than she has in a long time.

Lena.

And even that is choked by the things Kara said to her.

And, above all, a betrayal that she isn’t sure Lena will ever be able to forgive.

She needs to see Lena.

To apologise.

To know she’s actually okay.

As okay as she can be.

Part of her thinks she should give Lena more time. But how would that look, after everything, to not even try? If Lena wants to be alone, Kara would will leave her be. But she wants to present the option, at least. To let Lena know, Kara is there.

If she’ll have her.

Kara takes the bus to L-Corp. It’s slow, and sticky, and smells bad. But it gives her time. The elevator ticks upwards and when she emerges on the floor that holds Lena’s office, nerves start to writhe in her belly. She’s purposefully not dwelled too much on her realisation last night. On the way it all seems so obvious now. On how it must have seemed to Lena like she really was using her—and Kara pauses mid step, just outside her office—because she even said as much to Lena, under red kryptonite. On top of it all, Kara has no idea how Lena feels about her. She doesn’t even know if it’s better if Lena only thinks of her as a friend and the sex was a bonus to make them both feel better, like Kara thought it was just last week. Or if Lena possibly feels the same, and Kara threw it in her face.

She may throw up if she stands outside her office door any longer.

She raises her hand and knocks.

 

* * *

 

Lena has made it through a board meeting, two conference calls, a lot of paperwork, and her seemingly never ending emails. It’s methodical, almost soothing, to slip on her CEO persona and pretend like that last few days haven’t happened.

No one knows what passed, and it’s a blessing. Supergirl—Kara’s time under red kryptonite went largely unnoticed, besides certain comments overheard and that interview. The police station was damaged where Lillian was being held, but that’s been covered up by the DEO.

It’s all enough to make Lena’s head spin.

So she just keeps working.

Her receptionist brings her coffee and Lena blinks at it, then up at her and receives a small smile. “I thought you could use it.”

And she definitely could.

There’s a reason that woman gets a bonus in each pay check.

When there’s a knock at her door an hour later, Lena doesn’t even think before she calls, “Come in.”

She looks up from her desk and Kara walks in.

She doesn’t walk in.

She slinks in, shoulders a little hunched and hands behind her back. Like she’s ready to be told to leave, and Lena hates that that’s what she actually wants to tell Kara to do. Already, heat is in her cheeks, a burn of shame at the memory of Kara’s cruel words.

Not Kara’s, she tries to remind herself.

Just some small part of herself.

Lena stands up, her hands resting on the desk in front of her.

Kara pauses and takes her in, and Lena represses the urge to check her hair, to run her fingers under her eyes, where dark shadows cling. When Lena doesn’t tell her to leave immediately, Kara enters properly, the door clicking shut behind her and she pauses opposite Lena, the desk between them.

A constant in their lives, this desk. Lena’s cheeks burn more.

Just yesterday Kara stood where she’s standing now, dressed so differently and tone a little harsh, words not like her. And Lena knew something was up.

“Hi.”

Lena wants to smile at her. At the adorable way Kara’s lips quirk up, just a little. The way her hand comes up to give a slight wave. It’s just so utterly _Kara_ and it’s lovely and a relief, yet Lena can’t bring that smile to her lips. “It’s you.” She cocks her head and Kara dips her own. “It’s very obvious now, that you weren’t you yesterday.”

“I—” Kara cuts herself off and gives the tiniest shake of her head like she doesn’t know what she was going to say.

Silence, for a second.

Kara looks exhausted. Something Lena is really only realising now she’s never seen. Being Supergirl and all, that make sense.

This is Kara Danvers in front of her, yet it’s not.

She could very well be a stranger.

“Lena.” It’s a whisper, and it shouldn’t tug at Lena like it does. Kara’s eyes are staring right at her and they’re so blue. So clear. So _earnest_ and a resentful little part of Lena wants to choke on that thought, because earnest Kara was keeping things from her. Which is not the worst part, as everyone is entitled to their secrets. But what hurts was that she was adamantly lying. “Lena, I—” Kara huffs and looks up for a second, before stepping close. Her own hand goes on the desk too and it’s a wide desk, but it’s like there’s an undercurrent of something, electricity, connection, running between the desk and their hands. “I am so, so sorry.”

And it’s awful. It’s awful, because Lena doesn’t even know what she’s apologising for.

Kara’s voice is hoarse, rough with meaning. “The things I said to you…”

So that. That’s what she’s apologising for. “You weren’t yourself. Alex explained, that your brain chemistry was altered.”

And Lena wants to step back, wants to pull her hand away from that desk but she just can’t. Even her stupid body is betraying her, because even when she feels like she does right now, some part of her still wants to be close to Kara.

For god sakes, some part of her still wants to comfort Kara.

Some very large part.

Because Kara’s jaw is working, a muscle clenching, her eyes so pained and Lena stops and wonders for a second, how the two of them, so broken, ever managed to not tear each other down.

Then she remembers that that is exactly what they did.

“It’s not an excuse, I said some…some horrible things. And you didn’t deserve one of them.”

“But I deserved to be lied to since the very start?” The words slip out, with more venom in them than she meant to use. They barely slip out either, they bite out, and Kara flinches.

Neither moves their hand.

Kara still has not broken eye contact. “No. No, you did not deserve that.” The silence is so loud. It’s deafening, how silent it is in this room. “Nor did you deserve to find out that way. If—if there was one thing I could change, it would be that.”

And Kara’s forehead is furrowed and the depth in her eyes is so painful Lena wants to turn her gaze away.

And she finally does, swallowing, and pulling her hand of the desk—it’s like tearing. A ripping. Severing.

She turns and walks onto the balcony, gulping air, because it’s all running circles in her head and it’s not stopping.

Kara lied about being Supergirl. Continuously, adamantly. She said things, all done by red kryptonite. Except….except those things had to come from somewhere, didn’t they? Things Kara thought? Even if once, deep down? Or was that red kryptonite playing on Kara’s knowledge of what Kara knows of Lena just from being her friend, and therefore knowing what hurt her? She thought Lena would want to rule—that she had so much Luthor in her. The fact that when Kara came to her the night she was kidnapped, and they slept together, and Lena thought maybe, maybe Kara felt something for her too—Kara really, was under the influence of that red mind altering drug.

It’s all like a punch in the gut and she puts her hands on her hips and tries to slow her breathing down.

On top of all of this, her mother kidnapped her, her brother orchestrated the entire thing, and they’re the ones that caused the rest of it.

Her stomach clenches.

“Do you want me to go?”

The words are so low Lena almost misses them. She turns and Kara’s standing in the door, hovering, unsure. Not wanting to step into Lena’s space, but not wanting to just disappear. She just knows that Kara will do whatever Lena needs right then.

And god, Lena loves her.

But god, everything hurts.

And Kara’s looking at her, just so soft.

Soft, even as she hurts, too. Because maybe Kara hurt Lena yesterday, but Kara’s own hurt spewed out too. A heavy burden of hurt.

Lena doesn’t answer, she can’t. She just presses her lips together. Kara takes a step outside, a few feet all that separate them. Lena’s overcome with the urge to step back until she can grip the rail again, something to centre her, to hold her down.

“I can leave?”

And Lena still doesn’t answer, and Kara steps closer again, and she’s barely a few inches away, radiating warmth and Lena wants to fall into her, to wrap her arms around her and bury her face in Kara’s neck. To pull Kara in, to fall apart together, because she feel just how lost Kara is, how broken she is too.

But they’ve fallen apart together for months now, and it’s only lead to this: more pieces really, to be put back together, more fragility, more hurt.

“I just—there’s something I want to tell you,” Kara says.

And there it is, that softness, in Kara’s eyes. And Lena just can’t take it, not with everything, not when only yesterday Kara floated in front of her and dropped words at Lena’s feet that are like bombs. Not when Lena’s heart aches with love for this woman who Lena has realised she doesn’t really know. Not when Lena feels like she’s been played like a game from all angles for far too long.

So finally, she shakes her head. “I want you to go.”

The words are like drowning.

A suspended moment, where Lena’s words hang between them. Then Kara nods, not a twitch of surprise on her face. She nods, and tries to smile. “Okay. I just—I know it’s probably not helpful. But I’m here. I’m here, now. And I’ll be here when—if, you want to talk to me.”

And she turns and goes, leaving Lena with those words, when she can’t remember the last time someone told her they’d still be there, even after time.

And meant it, utterly, like Lena knows Kara does.

Lena waits until she is sure that Kara is out of the building, far away, before she lets the sob break out of her chest.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments all just...feed my writer soul. Thank you. This chapter ended up long, because I couldn't figure out how to split it. So these events were supposed to feel a little more...segmented...but that didn't end up happening. I hope you enjoy.
> 
>   
>  [you should all check out this awesome gif set an awesome human made based on this fic](http://childofjobassa.tumblr.com/post/170308843255/broken-in-pieces-ill-put-you-back-together-by)   
> 

The clang of barred doors being rolled open and closed. The squeak of rubber soled shoes on cheap floors. A shout, a cat call.

Lena juts her chin and buries her hands in her pockets and keeps walking.

Then silence, as they move into a more secured area.

Maximum security. Around that. To solitary.

When she slides into her seat, he’s already sitting there.

He grins, slow and charming, and cocks his head. The fact that his wrists are cuffed to the table and he’s in hideous orange does nothing to detract from it.

“Hello again, little sister.”

“Hello, Lex.”

He tuts. “No term of endearment for me? I’m hurt.”

She just stares steadily at him.

He leans back as much as is comfortable for him. “I’ve heard Supergirl’s been a naughty girl.”

She cocks her head.

“Okay, I heard nothing.” He laughs, like they’re playing a friendly card game and she’s called his bluff and that’s all the stakes are. Something, that’s always there, that will always be there, clenches in her stomach at the memory that that really was them, once. Playing games in a tasteful study, learning strategy and bluffing. Moves and countermoves, everything thought of ten steps ahead.

But with them, there was always an element of fun. He always tries to make sure she had that, in that house, at least.

Now, none of this is fun.

Except for him.

“And why haven’t you heard anything?”

She raises her eyebrows and juts her chin again at the barb she’s managed to jab him with.

His smile grows. “Oh, that one was cruel. You know they’ve taken all my toys. No guard under my thumb anymore. No contact with Cadmus. None at all with our poor mother, locked in her cell.”

Lena actually gives a mirthless laugh. “Oh, yes. Our poor helpless mother.”

He chuckles and there’s something shared between them, familial and bonding and only in existence between siblings who know their parents, and are half frustrated, half endeared.

Lena finally looks away, because that hurts more than any memory, and she doesn’t care if that shows any weakness.

“So you haven’t heard, but you can guess?”

“A safe guess, really. That red stuff, I’m telling you.” She meets his eye again and he’s just so delighted with himself. “It really brings out the ogre in our flying friends.”

Lena rests a hand on the table, the metal cool. She leans forward, her eye caught on his. “If you ever pull anything like that again…”

He separates his hands as much as he can. “You’ll what? Lock me away and throw away the key? Oh Lena, how else am I supposed to have my fun.”

“Just tell me why Lex? You try to kill m multiple times. Why—”

“That? Harmless fun.”

She swallows, because she still can’t get in a helicopter after the memory of how it jolted in the air. The muscles of her back twitch, at times, when she’s standing somewhere alone, as if she’s waiting for a knife to slip between her ribs. Harmless fun.

And she didn’t want a why to that, anyway. Not that.

“Nothing is harmless fun with you.”

His smiles are all gone, and she thought that would be a good thing, but the fervour in his eyes is far worse. “You betrayed me, sister. In the worst way. Your testimony was key.”

“You killed people, Lex.”

His hand slams flat down on the table and Lena doesn’t even flinch. “People who deserved it.”

She didn’t come here for this. She’s done this. They’ve done this. “Why drag her into this?”

That’s the why she wants.

“She’s a big S. She dragged herself into it.”

“Why go so personal?”

His grin unfurls then, something almost manic, when normally he manages manically charming, and glinting and he laughs. “Cadmus was never going to succeed in what it wanted, mother has her uses but she gets…fixated. But you? There was such an easy way to get to you.” He pouted at her. “Did she hurt you, Lena? Say things that wrapped deep in your chest and dug into your heart?” The pout is gone and he laughs. “Did you finally see what they all really are?”

She wants to say something, anything to make him feel like he didn’t win this one, but her tongue is stuck, glued to her mouth. She clenches her jaw.

“I can see it in your eye.” He leans forward. “It hurts, when the one your trust the most shows what they really think of you, doesn’t it?”

Lena stands, and she almost just walks out and leaves.

But she can’t leave it like that.

She puts her hands on the table and leans forward. “You’re going to be watched more than ever, now. You’re going to rot away in a cell and be nothing, Lex.” He stares up at her and she stares down at him and she feels like this is a battle line being drawn. “I’ll always miss my brother.” He blinks, once, and she almost sees that brother in his eye. Almost, but not. “But he’s gone. And you? You’re alone.”

And she turns and leaves, ignoring his, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

 

* * *

 

Kara leaves Lena alone.

She works. She works more than she’s done in a long, long time. She throws herself into her writing, covering the small stories that fill their website, and investigating slightly bigger stories when the opportunity presents herself. Some nights, she eats at Maggie and Alex’s house. They bring over take out or Maggie cooks and bit by bit, the nights end up warm. Cosy. James comes some nights, and Wynn. Kara works on her smile until over a few weeks it starts to feel less forced and she doesn’t feel like she’s forgotten how to just _be_ with her friends.

It’s not the same. She doesn’t think she’ll ever feel the same. But different is not so bad, either. It starts to feel right.

The DEO takes her back quickly. She winces when she catches the eye of some of the people she has vague, flash like memories of throwing into objects. Mumbled apologies and shaken hands help. She brings in boxes of doughnuts and doesn’t even eat half of them like she normally would. It barely takes a day until she’s reached normal, there.

She misses Lena fiercely. Even after they stopped sleeping together, they were still seeing each other. And before, too. Lena was the only person Kara let close for a long time, and the ache of missing her is deep. Deeper than that of Mon-el—which was convoluted and painful and lashed through with guilt and anger and memories that have been plaguing her since she was thirteen.

She simply misses _Lena_. Her laugh, the soft look in her eye that terrified Kara at the end, as unready as she was for anything like that. Her humour. Their conversations.

She misses the feel of her lips, the flare of her waist, the way the muscles in her back move under Kara’s palm.

Even the sound of her heartbeat.

 _Especially_ the sound of her heartbeat. Something soothing, something Kara learned to pick out the fluctuations of. Something Kara realises, sitting with her takeaway coffee, alone in a cafe, she used to soothe herself like Alex’s breathing, back when she was anxious.

She never even noticed she was doing it with Lena until it’s out of her life.

And missing her just feels guilty, because she hurt Lena on so many levels.

She wants to apologise, properly.

It’s a week into those first few weeks that Alex leaves it before she suggests a therapist she found. Someone government trained, who works within the DEO already. She’s worked there for years, J’Onn remembers when she first started. Apparently, J’Onn has seen her.

Kara can be as explicit as she wants, can reveal anything to do with Krypton and all her feelings about it and the pain that’s always been swelling but just seems to have burst.

The thought terrifies her, and when Alex suggests it, eyes wide and deep and soul-filled, Kara literally flies away out the window.

She’s above the city and sucking in lungfuls of air, Alex’s exasperated sigh as Kara literally fled playing over in her ears. If she focusses, she can hear the occasional muttered, “Kara, this is absurd I know you can hear me come back down.”

So she stops focussing again.

The night is cool and clinging and the clouds are more like a mist.

It’s beautiful.

Above her, stars spill out like someone knocked a jar over and Kara swallows and closes her eyes, drops her head back and throws her arms out, suspended high above the city.

It’s amazing now, that’s she’s figured these thoughts out, how much she can recognise that she misses Mon-el, but that fractured feeling in her chest was old, never healed, and had nothing to do with him. But was a fracture she lined with her feelings for him, with his mere existence, in the hope it would help.

That fracture is still here, cracking occasionally and carrying echoes of the collapse of a planet, of the grasp of her mother’s hands in a hug that _hurt_ that Kara didn’t understand, the feel of her father’s hand cupping the back of head, and the dread deep in her belly when she didn’t understand why they just weren’t going with her. One of them could have fit. The colour of it all is red: red of suns and sand and the Earth and the colour of a planet that’s dying.

Kara focusses again.

“Maggie, seriously, she could hear this right now and she’s just not listening on purpose. Kara, damn it. I know you can hear me. Come the fuck back.”

Kara heaves a sigh and plummets, landing back in the window where Alex is leaning against the kitchen island with her arms crossed _glaring_ at the window, and Maggie is in the kitchen dishing up pasta and muttering, “Oh thank _god_.” She glances up at Kara. “Thank you.”

Kara crosses her own arms and rolls her eyes. Then huffs and drops her arms back down. “You’re right,” she mumbles.

“Um.” Alex steps forward, hand held up to her ear. “I’m sorry? What did you say?”

Maggie sighs.

Kara does too. “You’re right. I need go. I—I want to go.”

Alex has kept stepping forward until she’s right in front of her and she ducks her head to catch Kara’s eye. Kara blinks and sucks in a breath when she sees Alex’s eyes are filled, shimmering with tears. Alex swallows heavily and looks at her so sincerely Kara may fall apart on the floor right there. “Thank you.”

And then Kara is pulled into a hug and they’ve wrapped their arms around each other and Alex whispers again, “Thank you.”

And Alex pulls back with a laugh and wipes at her cheeks and tugs Kara over to the island to eat hot pasta that Maggie piles onto their plates and before she’s even asked if there’s more, Maggie has poured an entire second helping onto her plate and Alex’s shoulder rubs next to hers and Kara still feels like something is aching in her chest, but it’s also like, maybe, she can breathe.

It’s hours later when Maggie has gone to bed, exhausted after her first day back at work after a week off due to doctor’s orders, that Alex flops next to Kara on the sofa and pulls a throw over both of them.

“Hey.” Kara leans on Alex’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Alex replies. “Have you heard from Lena?”

All the breath leaves Kara’s body and she tries not to sound strangled. “No.” She pauses and then goes on, “I tried to talk to her, the day after—” Alex shifts, like she’s about to say something, and Kara rushes on “—no, no. I know. It was too soon. But I couldn’t _not_ see her either. Just ignore her and pretend she wasn’t owed the world’s biggest apology?” Alex nods, concedes her point. “I didn’t say much. I just, I said sorry. And I wanted to say…more. But I gave her the option to listen to me or for me to go, and she asked me to leave.” Kara stares at the wall, doesn’t blink. “It wasn’t angry, she just, needed space. So I told her I was around, whenever she needs me, _if_ she needs me. And I left.”

Alex wraps an arm around her shoulder. “I think that went as well as to be expected.”

“I think so.”

Kara knows her voice sounds sad, heavy. But she is, just that, at the thought of Lena.

“I’m proud of you.”

Kara scoffs. “What? Why? For apologising? Because I owe her more than that.” And sh does. She has so much she wants to say to Lena, if Lena wants to hear it. “I need to, to talk about it all, to, not excuse, but explain and—”

Alex laughs, softly. “No. I didn’t mean for apologising. That’s never been an issue for you. I’m proud, for a lot of reasons. For giving her space when she needs it.” It’s the hardest thing Kara has ever done. “For not pushing your feelings on her when she’s not ready to hear it. For—for talking to me, now. And other times.” Alex’s voice drops to a whisper. “You were just, gone, Kara. For a long time, and I was so scared I was going to lose you. And I’m so sorry all of this has happened to you but I’m just so relieved you’re talking about it, and going to see someone, and—”

Kara straightens up and pulls Alex into a hug and when she goes home an hour later, she gets to punch a mugger and it feels good, with none of the anger from before licking up her arm. Or, well, only just a little.

 

* * *

 

Lawyers have never been Lena’s favourite thing. Not the type her family deals with. But Lena has a good one and she has to see her a touch too much due to how wrapped up she was in everything that went down. But not as much as she thought she might, due to how cut and dry everything really is. She’s still a key witness, though. But the trial is months away and Lillian is in jail until then and while Lena needed to confront Lex, once more, she’s currently content to avoid Lillian.

Lillian has a way of stripping down Lena’s layers until just the bare bones of her insecurities are laid bare. And it’s painful and humiliating, because Lena has done a lot in her life to crawl above being those insecurities.

Sometimes, that thought strikes her and she’ll be sitting at a classy bar, with a martini in front of her and her legs crossed and the bartender eyeing her off with an intention in their gaze Lena just doesn’t have the energy to return.

That idea strikes her and Lena freezes, every time, her fingers resting over the bottom of her martini glass.

Because that is what red kryptonite did to Kara, according to Alex.

But not only did it reduce her to those horrible, angry thoughts, it altered her brain chemistry.

This, Lena understands.

The words still cut at her, leave little slices everywhere that sting more than one deep wound, added altogether like that. Because Lena _was_ just so, so _stupid_ not to see that Kara and Supergirl were one and the same. She _did_ play a role in Mon-el leaving, she played a huge role in the Daxamites invading that led to everything. That’s fact, and if a small, angry part of Kara knew that…well, Lena can’t blame that part of her.

Because no matter how much her brother tried to make those words cut deep and ruin her, they haven’t. Not really. Not when Lena knows what it’s like to have those thoughts. To think ugly things. Things that you don’t act on.

Because Lex may have wanted her to see Kara as a monster.

But what Lena can’t forget, more than those words that hurt, that want to tear her up? The look in Kara’s eyes as she stared at Lena across the table and told Lena how _good_ she was. The crack in her voice, wavering with belief, over the word.

Just the memory of that almost makes Lena choke back a sob and she picks up her glass to mask it, takes a too-long sip.

That memory, combined with the soft look in Kara’s eyes right before Lena told her to go, right after Kara told her she wanted to tell Lena something, almost makes Lena reach for her phone.

Because, damn it all, she still misses Kara.

With everything.

But then she remembers the lie. The ongoing, embarrassing lie.

The biggest thing of it all.

Betrayal, shame.

And Lena’s fingers curl into a fist she leaves on her lap and she drains her glass and leaves.

Because that soft look clashes with everything Lena told herself, before the red kryptonite: that that sex was just that, for Kara.

It’s been weeks without seeing Kara. Another week passes, and it’s a month.

She sees Supergirl on the news and she cocks her head and watches the way Supergirl and Kara blur. The way they differ. Watches the way Supergirl stands so straight, her hair always out, blush on her cheeks. Make up. The more she watches her, the less Lena berates herself for not noticing.

Kind of.

They are so different, even as they’re so similar.

A thought she dwells on for days.

Kara lifts a bus over her head—Supergirl lifts a bus over her head. On the news. And Lena watches the wind play in her hair and the power in her arms and missing Kara swells so suddenly again she grasps the edge of the desk and blinks back tears.

Because despite everything, ignoring everything else, Kara was Lena’s best friend and Lena misses her fiercely.

She picks up the phone, and doesn’t call Kara. Instead, she makes an appointment with a psychologist. It’s someone she’s seen before, a few yeas ago, after Lex. Lena stopped going, before she should have, and when she starts again, it’s like slowly pulling a bandaid off: stinging, painful, pulling away superficial healing but leaving something deeper exposed to actually be healed.

 

* * *

 

There’s a day Alex is at a coffee bar near L-Corp. There was a parking garage suspected to be full of a nest of eggs that looks suspicious and she’d swept it, ready for goo and explosions and gore, but it had turned out to be a bunch of balls overgrown with mildew in the back of a storage locker.

Which was, you know, gross in and of itself.

She sent her squad back to headquarters, and realised she hadn’t had a coffee all morning which is just blasphemous, really. A headache is genuinely starting to creep in.

The line is long and she finds her eyes darting around the room, from object to object and person to person. Tiredness bites at her eyes and she flicks through her phone. Messages from Kara about the alien she took down in the early hours of the morning, a clean up done by the night crew at DEO. The message of a selfie of her with her thumb up and boot on something covered in pulsing purple liquid.

Kara’s smile.

And it’s so bright.

The crest on her chest is covered in the purple stuff and so is her fist and the photo is ridiculous.

It’s very Kara.

And Alex grins at her phone.

It’s very _Kara_.

It’s been two months since the red kryptonite incident.

Kara is, little bit by little bit, laughing like she means it. She’s present in ways she wasn’t for months. She sees the therapist at least once a week, twice the first month, and sometimes she has flashes of anger, after. Her skin crawling and eyes glowing red and Kara shoots into the sky and Alex doesn’t know what she does up there. Maybe she screams.

Sometimes she leaves quiet and tentative. Pensive.

Sometimes she leaves cheerier than when she went in.

She’s not always doing well, regardless of whether she had therapy that day.

But her good days are more often than the bad. And sometimes it’s just bad moments, not bad days.

And the biggest thing of it all?

Kara disappears to scream or beat up bad guys or throw trains around in the junk yard or eat ice-cream while floating on a cloud, or whatever she does. And then after, she messages Alex and checks in. Or answers Alex’s message. Or sends a Snap from a pizza bar with Wynn and James. Or, on days she’s really bad, she seeks Alex out and she _talks_. Floods and floods of words. Things Alex doesn’t know how to fix. So she asked the therapist what she should do and she only lay a hand on Alex’s arm and smiled and just said “listen”.

So that’s what Alex does.

And she remembers, as she does, the shaking refugee, the lone survivor of her planet besides a cousin who is grown and remembers none of it, who took up too much space in Alex’s home when she first arrived. The girl who never woke up screaming, but rather with a hand clutched over her pyjama shirt and eyes wide and scanning the room. The girl who lay on the roof some nights and talked only a little about things that now truly spill from Kara.

And Alex’s heart aches for it all. For Kara, and the loss of her planet and the confusing anger she has at her parents, for the role they played, for sending her away, for the responsibility they lay at her feet, for not going with her out of some twisted nobility. And Alex has had all of this cross her mind before, that this is what Kara lost, but she hears about the best friend who made bad jokes that Kara loved, about the food she wakes up tasting sometimes, about the music she misses, the favourite song she could still hum but can’t bring herself to or she’ll spontaneously cry.

The anger than never truly leaves her.

And now Alex is staring at a text of her dorky sister pulling a thumbs up, and she feels like maybe, she’s going to be okay.

“Ma’am?”

Alex jumps and looks up, wincing at the barista and steps up to place her order. When she finally has her coffee in hand, she turns and ends up blinking at Lena Luthor.

She looks….well. Which is nice. Alex messaged her a few times after everything. They bonds a little at various points of the catastrophic red k—apparently what they’re calling it now—incident. They message weekly, really. Usually a meme. Or a silly video. A “what’s up”.

Alex doesn’t know if Lena has anyone else.

“Lena.” She grins. “I wondered if I’d run into you.”

“You—you did?”

“Well, I knew I was near L-Corp.”

“Of course.” She smiles. “I just, needed to get out of the office. It gets stifling there. I think my assistant takes it as a personal insult that I want to get my own coffee.”

Alex laughs. “Well, I think that’s a big part of the job.”

“True. Maybe I should let her do it more often.”

Lena’s name is called and she takes her coffee and they hover there, in the space.

“Do you have time? Want to sit?”

And Lena checks her watch and nods and that’s how Alex has coffee with Lena Luthor.

An unprecedented event.

They have coffee again a few days later, and then suddenly it’s a weekly thing and three weeks have gone by.

It’s…weird.

And nice.

Lena is nice, and she’s funny in a nerdy way Alex appreciates. They actually bond over science stuff and discover they had similar fields of research back when Alex did that.

They never talk about Kara.

Alex tells Kara she’s seen Lena and Kara tries not to ask her a thousand questions and actually manages not to. But there’s a wistful look in her eye and Alex hopes her sister realises just how deeply she’s in love.

So is Lena, but they just don’t talk about it.

Until they end up drunk.

They don’t mean to.

They meet up for a late afternoon coffee. Alex has the day off and Maggie is working and Kara is of reporting…reports. Or something.

She needs to pay more attention.

And afterwards, Kara has plans for some kind of arcade thing with Wynn.

Or something.

Their coffee ends up being an espresso martini and then they have a gin and tonic. And then Lena remembers a bar around the corner and Alex agrees because drunk Lena is actually quite funny and then it’s nine pm.

“Nine isn’t even lates.” Alex snorts. “Late. Not lates. That’s not even a thing.”

Lena, head in her hand, nods. “It’s true. But we started at four.”

“Ohhhh.” Alex nods, and contemplates her whiskey. “That is very true. Good counter argument. Did you ever think of being a lawyer?”

“Actually, yes.” Lena laughs and it’s a garbled sound. “I did. But mother deigned it not good enough.”

“Ouch.”

Lan snorts and then laughs again. “Ouch. What a _great_ summation of my relationship with my mother.”

Alex’s eyes go wide and she watches Lena laugh again so she laughs because fuck, that is funny. Even if it is a little sad.

And then their laughter trickles off, because fuck. That isn’t just a little sad.

They both stare at their drinks and Lena swirls hers around in its glass, the ice clinking. Alex finally swivels a little to look at her just as Lena glances up and Alex freezes, because her eyes are glazed and red rimmed. Lena quirks her lips in a ghost of a smile and huffs something that could be a laugh.

“Sorry.”

Alex shakes her head. “No. Don’t be sorry.”

And she doesn’t know what else to say. Because she wanted to talk to Lena for a long time, about red k, and Kara, and what that all meant. Because she doesn’t know how alone Lena is, but she thinks it’s pretty alone.

“I’m uh—I’m sorry,” Alex says and Lena looks upsharply so Alex hurries on to finish. “Just—I’m sorry that things have been shit.”

“Shit.” Lena swirls her drink again. “They were pretty shit.”

“Were?”

“Well, are. I don’t feel the best.” She gives another huff that could be a laugh. “But I’ve kind of…made my peace with a lot of it.”

Alex nods. “I did the same.”

“The first time?”

“Yup. Kara and S—” Alex looks around. No one is near them. “Supergirl. I… I don’t know where that line is. Maybe there isn’t one? Maybe they’re separate? Maybe there’re multiple of her… I just know that’s she’s my sister and I love her, every part of her. And I loved her after she tried to kill me on red kyptonite.”

Lena’s head whips around. “What?”

“Like, full blown ready to end me. She broke my arm. She almost destroyed the city. But you know—it wasn’t that? It wasn’t that that destroyed me. It was the words she had. The way she knew how to hurt me. Where to hurt me. The—” Alex swallows, and throws back another sip. “The truth in them, even if it was atom sized?” Alex nods, staring down at her glass. “That was what hurt.”

Lena’s lip quivers. “I uh—I get that.”

“Yup.” Alex’s smile quivers, and she lets it fall. “The first time…was horrible. We didn’t know what was going on. And she was…fuck, she was cruel.”

Lena makes that noise again, the non-laugh that’s more a huff through her nose.

“She really got at me? You know? Like, she really knew where to twist that knife.”

“That she did.” Lena’s head is heavy in her hand, elbow low on the bar top and she’s swivelled to completely face Alex. They must look like a mess. “How did you let it go?”

Alex sighed. “Some of it I didn’t, but only because she _really_ nailed some truth. But the rest of it? I remembered that it was stuff she used to comfort me over, before she used it like a weapon. It was stuff she knew, because Kara is a really, really good person. An idiot sometimes—but shit, she cares? You know?”

“I do,” she says quietly. “That is, is part of it. For me. That and well…of course she thought a lot of those things. We all think things, or realise things or—or ponder things?”

“We just all have the courtesy of burying that down.”

“Exactly. So I—I can forgive that. With therapy.”

Alex laughs and holds her glass up and Lena clinks her against it.

“Even the whole…thinking you’d want to join her in world domination?” Alex asks.

Lena laughs, real this time. “This sounds like a bad movie.”

“It really does.” Alex straightens, wavering on her stool, and drops her voice low. “World. Domination. I. Will. Dominate. I must rule, the cockroaches will fall under my feet.”

Lena snorts, “Nailed it.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, I can get over that. Because I don’t want that.” Lena twists her face up in disgust just at the thought. Alex wonders how much of it is simply the thought of being like the mother she despises. “Because how can I feel shame in that, when Supergirl, the beacon of light, the hope that keeps this city going—” Alex raises her eyebrows at the wording “—who’s ultimate goal, in the end, was that? When she has that in her too?”

Alex is slumped against the bar again, blinking at her. Taking it in. Because it’s not something she’s ever thought before.

Kara’s worst thoughts of others were out, which hurt Alex, and Lena, and J’onn—lots of people. But Kara’s poor intentions, thoughts _she_ could have, were out there too.

Lena doesn’t even notice. “We all have darkness and light, to varying degrees. I was angry for weeks—hurt, more like. But then that…faded.”

“Are you gonna call her?” Alex blurts out.

And she never meant to do that.

Lena just blinks at her.

Alex blinks back.

“Well—are you?” Drunk Alex has no tact.

Lena drops her gaze back to the glass, swirling the drink again. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Understandable.” Alex wants to tell her just how in love with her Kara is. It’s written all over her face, all the time. But it’s not her place, and even her drunk brain gets that. She wants to tell Lena just how messed up Kara was, how much she her Lena, on so many levels, but that Kara hurt herself, too. “She misses you.” Lena takes a sip, back ramrod straight. “I—I’m not telling you that to make you feel bad. But I didn’t know if you even knew? You know?”

“What?”

Alex rolls her eyes at her self. “I wasn’t sure, if you knew. That she misses you. I wasn’t sure.”

Lena squints at her.

“You know, don’t you?” Lena asks.

And she leaves the question open, not obvious, so in case Alex doesn’t know she and Kara were sleeping together for months, Lena doesn’t spill it.

Lena’s a really good person.

“You’re a really good person.”

Lena half smiles, even as her brow furrows. “Uh—thanks?”

“And I do know. That you two were, as Maggie liked to put it, banging.” In the middle of a sip, Lena chokes on her whiskey and Alex jovially thumps her back. “She’s not the most poetic,” she says proudly.

“Did _everyone_ know?” Lena’s recovered sufficiently to take another harsh sip.

“What? Hell no. I only figured it out after all the mess. Maggie pegged it right before you got kidnapped. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t even know Kara liked women. But then it was pretty obvious…”

Lena drops her forehead on the bar top. “It was such a mess.”

Alex absentmindedly rubs her back. “Yeah.”

Not that she really knows, but she knows Kara ended it because she was a mess, and she knows Kara was a mess going into whatever it was they were doing and she knows Lena wasprobably a mess?

Everything was messy.

Lena sighs. “I knew I shouldn’t have let it happen. Kara was…was hurting. So badly. She was drinking. And she needed a friend. And I was in _such_ denial about my feelings.”

Alex freezes. But Lena doesn’t notice. She’s speaking down at the bar, her forehead probably red from where it’s pressed against the wood.

“I knew it was ill advised. I did it anyway. And then I realised just how damn in _love_ with her I am and then she ended it, which is the best thing she could have done, and then my mother was kidnapping me and then Kara was a raging asshole and I just…” she sighs. “It’s such a mess. And everything just _hurts_ , Alex.” She straightens up and Alex’s hand falls away and she blinks at Alex, red on her forehead as predicted, and Alex is just staring at her. “What?”

“You _love_ her?”

Lena’s eyes go wide. “I—um. No.”

Alex is almost grinning. “You’re _in_ love with her.”

“What?” Lena scoffs. “No.” Her shoulders drop in resignation. “I need another drink.”

And she orders two more and Alex just wants to smack Lena and Kara together because they’re both so in love with each other but are both just raging _messes_.

“I don’t think love is supposed to hurt like this.”

Those words pull Alex right back to the ground and Lena is contemplating her new drink, again.

Alex opens her mouth, but then closes it.

Because love isn’t supposed to hurt.

“And I can move on from everything else. I can. The hard words, the Luthor thing—but, Alex.” And Lena looks up at her, eyes big and wet and aching. “She lied to me for so long. And I want to let that go, but my best friend lied to me for so long, on so many levels and I just…”

And Alex can’t say anything to that. Well, she could. She could talk about secret identities and necessary untruth and Kara’s safety and Lena’s safety. There was no way she’d have been on board with telling Lena, way back.

But she’s sitting here with someone who is kind of a friend and is hurt because the woman she’s in love with kept a huge, life changing secret from her for a year. Not only did she keep that secret, she actively lied to cover it.

And maybe Lena being angry at Kara isn’t fair, considering Kara keeps that secret to protect people she loves.

But it almost maybe isn’t unjustified, that Lena is this hurt.

Alex sighs. She nudges Lena with her shoulder and she pushes her drink closer.

And at the end of the night, when she’s making sure Lena is in a cab before Maggie picks her drunk ass up, she pulls her into a hug—something they haven’t done—and says in her ear.

“I’m pretty sure that whatever you got from Kara, was who she is, underneath the identities and the hero and the confusion.”

And then Lena’s bundled into the cab and gone and Maggie is walking towards her swinging her keys on her fingers with an amused smirk and eyebrows that are up to her hairline.

“Well hi, drunk Danvers.”

 

* * *

 

Lena has a headache that lasts most of the day. She has to get through her therapy appointment with a hangover she can practically _taste_ and then admit that she resorted to drinking to deal with her feelings to her mildly judgmental psychologist.

Okay, fine, she’s not judgemental at all.

She blames Alex.

The work day then drags painfully slowly, and thankfully leaves Lena with no time to process the fact that she talked about her feelings a _lot_ with Kara’s sister. Who also talked about her feelings.

Her therapist was actually proud of that.

She’s in a cab on the way back to her apartment, when it all finally starts to sink in. It’s dark already, the night flashing by in neon lights and city sounds.

Alex’s words as she got in the cab well up, hard, like a wave, tugging at her mind as it washes in and recedes again and again.

And not just those words.

Ones Alex said earlier, about Kara and Supergirl, and not knowing herself where the line was.

And when her brother hinted at in his actions, thinking he could show Lena who Kara really is.

Lena’s own thoughts, many many months ago.

It’s all there, and she’s too tired to deal with it.

Then she realises she forgot her phone.

She closes her eyes and groans and drops her head against the headrest.

This hangover can go to hell.

Maybe she can not get it? Maybe she can leave her phone for the night.

Her millennial ass lasts all of one second on that thought before she’s asking the cab driver to turn back. She pays her and leans against the wall in the elevator on the way up to her office, the building eerily silent around her.

Kara and Supergirl are swirling around her head and she just, suddenly, feels sad.

She walks through the dark, silent corridor to her office and into the open door, spotting her phone on the desk, grabbing it with far too much enthusiasm. It’s worrying how attached she is, but whatever.

Movement out of the corner of her eye makes her freeze, then turn slowly to look out the window to her balcony.

Supergirl—Kara—is siting on the edge of the railing, hands holding the bar, gaze out over the city. All Lena can see is her back, the cape fluttering behind her, her hair long and loose.

Her breath catches in her chest and a lump grows in her throat she tries to swallow down.

It’s been two months. More?

Two months without seeing her in person.

And now she’s sitting on Lena’s balcony.

She has no idea how Kara didn’t hear her. Lena takes a hesitant step forward and Kara doesn’t turn around, or gives any sign she knows Lena is there. Supergirl definitely has super hearing? She takes another step forward and another, until she’s at the locked sliding door, her new position meaning she can take in Kara’s profile.

And Lena rests her fingers tips against the glass, and she watches without anyone to stop her.

Headphones dangle from Kara’s ears and she’s staring up, at the sky, not over the city like Lena thought.

Supergirl was always all broad shoulders and strength.

This…this looks like _Kara_.

Her shoulders slope down, just a little. Curve in. She’s not studying a threat in front of her, or holding her chin on an angle that demonstrates power.

She’s gazing, so softly, at something infinite over their heads, the long line of her throat exposed and Lena remembers how soft it was, under her lips and tongue, how Kara shuddered when Lena dragged her teeth over her pulse. Her throat would look like this in bed, head thrown back and hair tousled on the pillow. Her legs are swinging, Lena can tell from the way her body shifts, and she blinks slowly, not often. Her lips are slightly parted and every now and again a fingertip taps against the rail to the music playing on the headphones.

Lena should turn around and leave.

She should.

But she’s transfixed, eyes caught on her. She’d been so scared she would continue seeing someone she doesn’t really recognise, someone meshed with someone else Lena thought of as an entirely separate person.

But that’s not what happened at all.

It’s Kara.

Just Kara.

Kara closes her eyes, and she’s just suspended there, in the near darkness, soft light from the city on her that’s barely really there. Shadows play over her in patches, and Lena swallows heavily as she watches Kara draw in a shuddering breath. She opens her eyes again and they’re clear as she keeps just staring up.

What is she watching?

Before Lena knows she’s doing it, she unlatches the door and slides it open and that’s finally enough to make Kara’s head whip around, her mouth dropping open. She tugs the headphones out one of her ears and rises off the railing so she’s floating and the site is enough to tug Lena through the door properly.

Kara, flying.

It’s still…it’s not wrong.

It’s just not entirely right, yet.

“I’m so sorry, Lena. I—I was flying by and I could tell the building was empty and I just—I just wanted to somewhere to, to sit. And I thought you’d left, I would never, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay.”

Lena’s voice comes out calmer than she thought it would.

Kara just floats, just past the railing, and they stare at each other, the breeze playing between them, lifting Kara’s hair up gently, her cape still fluttering.

“Okay.” Kara nods. “I’ll just, go.”

“How did you not hear me come back?” Lena steps forward as she asks, and Kara rests her hands on the railing.

“I, well.” She gives a very small, sweeping smile. “I sometimes, switch off? Unfocus? The music helps.”

“Oh.”

And Lena walks forward so she’s leaning against the railing, looking out over the city, her hands resting on the railing, inches from Kara’s. Kara hovers, literally, for a moment gaze intense on Lena’s face, before she settles back on the railing, legs still hanging off the edge, her cape caught under her this time. Her hands settle back on the cool metal and Lena can feel her warmth in the air between them.

She smells like Kara, subtle shampoo, subtle perfume.

It’s almost enough to make Lena smile.

The headphone on Lena’s side is still dangling and she can hear music she vaguely recognises coming from it, tinny. They both stare forward.

“Do you want to talk?” Kara asks softly.

“No,” Lena replies, voice as equally low.

“Would you like me to go?”

A pause.

“No.”

So Kara stays there, and she holds the ear bud up for Lena to take, and when Lena half smiles and accepts, Kara swaps the other into her other ear and restarts the song, and the music is definitely one she knows.

 _Livewire_ , by Oh Wonder.

Next to her, Kara slowly swings her feet back and forth, and Lena leans her elbows on the rail, barely space between their arms.

And finally, the thoughts she’s been ignoring all day, maybe for weeks, settle. Like a click. Like they’d been ready to. Like they’d been waiting to.

She’s not mad at Kara for keeping this secret. Not anymore.

Not when Lena herself was mad at Supergirl because she’d been able to push aside Kara’s wants and needs for Supergirl’s own ambition, for Supergirl’s wants and needs.

When, really, it was Kara sacrificing her own wants and needs for something bigger than herself.

The music swells in her ear and Kara’s breathing next to her, the city playing out in front of them, and Lena’s heart is thumping against her ribs.

How can she be mad at this betrayal, at this lie, when she was mad at Supergil for not putting Kara first and now she knows they’re the same person, and Kara, poor Kara, is constantly sacrificing her own happiness. Her own wellbeing. Her own needs.

She sent her own boyfriend away, to save the world.

Her own sister can’t summarise it, unsure where the line is between Kara, and Supergirl, or if there even is one.

And Lena aches, for all she doesn’t know about Kara, for what she wants to know.

The anger and hurt feels like it’s ebbing, leaving behind something exhausted that still thrums in her veins, but distant, nothing compared to what’s been stinging for so long.

And there, the music fading out and a new song starting, with Kara next to her, Lena feels like she can breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...listen to the song.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for you comments. They make my day. Seriously. :)
> 
>   
>  [ Also, feel free to check out my head canon of drunk brotp Alex and Lena](http://gabsrambles.tumblr.com/post/170652815319/so-i-have-this-headcanon-thing-for-the-futureits)   
> 

 

“Do you remember when you sneezed and you slammed your hand down in the school library and broke in the desk?”

Kara’s eyes widen. “Oh Rao, I’d forgotten that.”

Maggie chokes on her beer. “You did that?”

Kara sighs the sigh of the hard done by. “Yes.”

Alex snorts and reaches over to the chips in the middle of the table at the bar. “Once she sneezed at school and froze a pipe in the bathroom and the water main exploded.”

Maggie gave a bark of laughter and Kara tries to press down her smile but fails and Alex laughs and munches on chips at the same time.

“Okay, fine, but you try and figure out how to function with both puberty _and_ sudden powers.”

Maggie winces even as she’s clearly trying not to laugh. “Aw, that’s rough little Danvers.”

“It was!”

“I was being genuine!”

Maggie’s laughing at her and Alex is grinning and Kara laughs, once, rolling her eyes up and everything is warm, the bar buzzing around them and her sister teasing her and, in so many ways, this is perfect.

They part ways hours later and the laughter still sits light in Kara’s chest, her lips feeling like they're still smiling, ghosting over her muscles.

She’s doing a sweep above the city before she goes home for the night when her phone dings and she fishes it out of her boot midair.

 

_The balcony is very empty._

 

Kara does smile, then. Wide and big and she drops down and is at L-Corp too fast to call herself smooth. She pauses just above the balcony outside Lena’s office and something warm and nervous spreads though her stomach. Swallowing, Kara takes her in. Lena’s hair is out, soft around her face. She’s in her office attire but it’s clearly the end of the day. She’s tugged her shirt out of her skirt and unbuttoned a few top buttons. She has a head phone in one ear, the other dangling and it’s there, waiting for _Kara_. Her shoes are kicked off somewhere and she stands in stockinged feet, something vulnerable about it that makes Kara’s heart speed up as Lena leans her elbows on the balcony, a glass of something in her hand.

Kara drops down slowly, cape fluttering, and Lena gives her a soft smile. Everything about her is so _soft_ and Kara just misses her, all the time.

It’s been a week since they were last on this balcony, earbuds in and something fragile and delicate in the air around them.

“That was fast.”

There’s a smirk, playful, on Lena’s lips and Kara laughs, unable to stop the sound from bubbling out, looking away and up before back to Lena’s face. “Shut up.”

And Kara sits next to her on the rail, legs dangling just like last time. Lena holds up the earbud and Kara slips it in and the song hits her and she laughs again, loud and bouncing out into the air in front of them and Lena grins into her glass as she takes a sip, their arms only an inch away from touching.

 _Human_ by Gabrielle Aplin.

 

* * *

 

Lena has so many meetings, all the time. And adding ones in with her lawyer to prep for her mother’s trial is not exactly something she enjoys adding to her already packed schedule. She’s a key witness, she was there for all the conversations between her mother and her brother and she saw the bomb triggered in her hand, and who witnessed her setting it off as Supergirl threatened her and killed three people and injured thirty nine.

The preparation is tedious and it’s a close and shut case, but of course her mother pled not guilty. Of course she did, demanding a trial and media coverage and making Lena testify against a family member.

Again.

She has coffees with Alex and occasionally they have something stronger and make jokes at each other about science stuff and Lena blinks one day over a gin and tonic and straightens suddenly.

Alex gives her a weird look. “What?”

“I—Alex. Are we friends?”

Alex laughs, and then the smile falls away and she leans over and smiles and Kara and Alex may not be genetically related, but Kara is in that smile, the openness, the belief and righteousness and Lena’s breath catches in her throat. “Of course we are.”

And Lena smothers her smile with her gin and warmth floods her chest and suddenly, just for that moment, she doesn’t really care about her mother at all.

That night Kara messages her a string of emojis that make no real sense and Lena sends back:

 

_Good day?_

 

It doesn’t take long for the answer to come through and Lena wriggles under her blanket a bit more, the sheets cool around her.

 

_It was actually. Nothing exciting: writing, interviews, typing a lot, stopped a bank robbery._

 

Lena snorts softly and rolls over as she types, the glow of her screen the only light in her room.

 

_Just the usual then._

 

She can almost feel the smile Kara will give at that, amused and a little smug her joke worked.

 

_Usual nine to five._

 

Lena grins at the answer.  Her gaze sweeps the empty pillow next to her and she can almost see the way Kara’s hair fell over the whiteness of the cover, golden and silvery all at once in this light.

 

_What are you listening to?_

 

The answer Kara sends back is instant.

 

_How did you know I was listening to something?_

 

_Lucky guess._

 

_Sleep by Azure Ray_

 

Lena flicks to her apps and opens Spotify, playing it immediately. She’s not heard it before and she closes her eyes, lost in the lyrics and pulling out meaning that probably isn’t there until her phone vibrates. The words edge into her mind, a song she could have listened to months ago and now she doesn’t know if it’s how Kara feels.

She has no idea how Kara feels. Kara would tell her, if she asked.

But for a few weeks now, they’ve only seen each other on Lena’s balcony, lyrics ringing around them and the sky stretched over them.

 

_Are you listening?_

 

Lena swallows.

 

_I am._

 

They don’t message anymore, but Lena lays there and lets the lyrics and melody wrap around her. She falls asleep with her phone in her hand and wondering if Kara is doing the same.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s a dark night. The clouds cover the sky, a black mass overhead. It’s comforting, almost. A blanket stretched over the city. The night is warm for it, even though past nights have had a bite of chill in the air. When Lena hears the rubber soles touch down outside, a touch too deliberate, as if Kara is ensuring Lena knows she’s there without being too loud, her stomach tightens and her lips quirk up in spite of herself. The building is quiet, everyone long gone home. The corridor lights outside are dimmed and Lena finishes the email she was typing out, hitting send and then flicking the computer into standby mode. The light fades and she’s left in near darkness.

Outside, Kara is sitting on the balcony railing again. Headphones on. Well, one in her right ear, the other dangling. She doesn’t turn, just sits and stares out over the city. Lena watches her for a moment, hair and cape drifting in the very subtle breeze, hands clasping the rail even though she really doesn’t need to do so.

As if Supergirl could fall.

As if she couldn’t catch herself if she did.

Lena wonders if anyone else sees the fragility in Supergirl. She doesn’t think they do. Just those who know Kara Danvers, probably.

There’s something about Kara that makes Lena want to wrap her arms around her and protect her.

An utterly absurd thought, to want to protect someone bulletproof. Someone who’s saved Lena’s life more times than she can count.

But she does.

She ends up next to Kara. Because of course she does. Kara hands her the headphone with a soft smile and soft fingers and Lena smiles back at the song that floods over her as she puts it in.

Kara’s arm just barely brushes Lena’s shoulder, the railing that bit high. High enough that Kara sits a bit taller than her. Heat runs up and down Lena’s arm and she almost sighs into it.

Into a touch.

It’s been so long.

And Kara’s body, the familiarity of it, leaves a lump of aching in her throat. She misses her, this, them.

And Kara’s being so patient, so slow.

Since she was kidnapped, it’s been months and months of formal handshakes. Maybe an arm touch or two from colleagues she’s a bit closer to, from her receptionist.

A drunken hug from Alex that Lena had clung to a little embarrassingly.

Another hug from Alex the other day as they said goodbye.

Because they’re friends now.

And now just this. Barely anything, Kara’s arm against her shoulder.

It’s so dark, like the city is respecting the sky’s wishes—lights that are normally on are switched off and there’s a hush. Respect of a night of silence and easy comings and goings.

The song fades out and a cover of _Colourblind_ by Natalie Walker starts and despite the aching want in Lena, she smiles, because Kara has the softest taste in music. And maybe _because_ of the aching want in Lena she slowly leans into Kara’s side more and lets her head fall on her shoulder. Kara doesn’t move, her entire body stills before she relaxes and Lena’s cheek is pressed into her suit, softer than she thought it would be. And slowly, the music gentle in Lena’s ear, Kara’s head rests agains the top of Lena’s.

It’s almost too much, after so long. Too much and not enough and it’s all a little overwhelming, and ridiculous, when Lena has had Kara pleading on her work desk, that this barest of intimacies is almost more than she can stand.

Yet it’s everything she wants.

Because all the space in the world won’t make Lena’s feelings change. Even now, they can’t stay away from each other.

Then Kara is drawing a shuddering breath and Lena tilts her head to look up at her, ear pressed to Kara’s shoulder and she can just make out Kara’s cheek above her, trails of tears glistening in the soft outside light. Kara turns, just slightly, and looks down. It’s a position of small kisses. Easy. Soft. Lena could press up onto her tiptoes and let her lips brush over Kara’s. Kara’s hand would trail up her side, her hand sliding over the back of her neck and holding her there, gently.

But Lena doesn’t do that. She just lets their breath mingle between them, warm and wet on her lips and their eyes caught on each other and tears on Kara’s cheek, white in the light like the lost trains of shooting stars she dragged with her from space. Lena brings her hand up and brushes her fingers over Kara’s cheek and catches those tears on her fingers, trails her fingertips over her cheeks, across her chin, to her neck, letting her fingers rest there, Kara’s pulse thumping beneath them.

Kara draws in another shuddering breath, her chest juddering and Lena’s chest aches for her, for the red of her eyes, the soft, broken look.

“I never wanted to lie to you.” The words whisper from her lips and Lena breathes them in, lets them settle in her lungs.

“You don’t have to explain—”

They’re all hushed tones and desperate looks.

“I know. But I want to.”

They don’t move, just blink at each other, nothing and everything between them.

“I couldn’t tell you, for all the technical reasons.” Kara is still whispering and Lena feels like they’re in a bubble here, the music still playing in the headphones, rising and falling. “But I also—I never felt like I had to try with you. I was just…me. You didn’t, you had no expectations. You seemed to just like me for whoever I was. Whoever I—I am.”

Kara’s eyes are so earnest, shadows on her face and Lena bites her lip. “I did.” Kara blinks, long and slow. “I do.” Lena breathes the words out.

Those furrows in Kara’s forehead smooth and her lips almost quirk into a smile. “You do?”

“I do.”

The music fades out, and the bass picks up in another and Lena turns her head so she staring out at nothing and Kara looks back up the sky and something between them feels mended, stitched together, tugging their pieces towards each other instead of shattering them apart.

 

* * *

 

Kara stares down at her phone. Then looks back up to Alex. Then back down at her phone. Then back up to Alex.

“What?”

“Uh—” Kara checks her phone again then stares at Alex. “Lena just asked if I want to have a coffee today.”

Alex just blinks at her.

Kara feels like her heart is in her throat.

“Um—okay. And why is that so shocking?”

“What?”

“Well…” Alex’s brow furrows. “You’ve been hanging out on her balcony for like a month.”

“Yeah…exactly.”

Alex keeps just staring at her so Kara keeps going.

“That’s all we’ve done. We’ve barely talked. I mean, we talk sometimes. And message. And it’s been—really nice, actually. Slow. But now she wants to meet. During the day.”

“Oh.” And Alex is slowly grinning. “So it’s a date.”

Kara drops her phone. Alex barks a laugh. She ducks under the table and scoops it up, glaring at Alex. “It’s not—it’s not a date.”

“Oh, it so is.”

“It is?”

Alex finally takes pity at her and leans forward, hand on Kara’s forearm. “It’s coffee. With Lena. Who you’ve had coffee with before. It’s not a big deal.”

Kara swallows and looks up at Alex. “It’s _Lena_.”

Alex nods, smiling softly. “I know.”

Kara lets out a long breath and slumps in her chair. “I can do this.”

Alex squeezes. “You can.”

Kara takes the bus and tries not hyperventilate on it. She ends up in the cafe opposite L-Corp too early and fidgets with a sugar packet at the table while she waits for Lena to arrive.

When she does, everything slows down and rather than panicking even more, it’s like Kara can breathe again. Lena’s ponytail flicks as she looks around the cafe and spots Kara, her face lighting up in a smile.

In the day time.

Because they’re together, in the same place, during the day and Kara is here as Kara and there are no headphones or cloudy nights or phones or lies or…

It’s them.

And none of that feels scary all of a sudden.

Lena slips into the seat opposite her. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

And they smile at each other across the table for far too long until Lena laughs, her head thrown back for a split second and the sight of it just makes Kara smile harder.

“Is this a date?” Kara blurts out.

Lena leans her elbows on the table and rather than do anything to make Kara panic at the question she definitely _did not_ mean to ask, Lena cocks her head. “Do you want it to be?”

Kara swallows, because this is it. “Very much.”

If Kara thought the grin before was beautiful, the one Lena gives her now is stunning.

“Good.” Lena purses her lips and her eyes are lit up and Kara feels like some part of her may explode. “Because I do too.”

It should be awkward.

At least a little stilted.

Like the lunch they had after they decided to stop sleeping together.

The date is anything but that, though.

It’s easy. It’s filled with Lena looking up at Kara from under her lashes and she bites her lip, once, and Kara visibly swallows.

It’s aways been easy with Lena. Or was. And having that back with none of the uncertainty from before flooding every thought and feeling is a relief Kara didn’t know she needed.

Lena’s foot ends up next to hers under the table and warmth spreads along her leg, just like her arm last week when Lena, for the first time since everything, had really touched her and rested her head on Kara’s shoulder on the balcony.

They talk about Alex. And Maggie. The work Kara’s working on. The stories she _wants_ to work on. L-Corp’s current projects.

“It did not look like it was _bleeding_.”

“Lena.” Kara leans forward, utterly sincere. “I got that article black and it would have saved him time to just print out a red piece of paper and give it to me, it was covered in so many edits.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “You’re being dramatic. You’re writing is amazing.”

Kara tugs to her phone and pulls up the file, edits showing and holds it in front of Lena. “Being dramatic?”

Lena’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s a lot of red.”

“Oh?” Kara smirks. “Is it Lena? Is it a lot of red.”

Lena just laughs and Kara wants to hear that sound forever,

It’s unavoidable, that they finally talk about the trial. Lena’s entire posture changes, becomes withdrawn, just a little, her eyes dropping down to the table.

But she doesn’t disappear, like Kara thought she might.

Kara leans forward, hand between them, hovering the air above the table.

This will never work if Kara is always hesitating, waiting for permission. She waited and Lena reached out to her and that was the signal, after telling Kara she wanted to space, that that time has passed.

So Kara closes the leftover space and rests her fingertips over the back of Lena’s hand. She doesn’t pull away or yell or tense. Instead, she looks up under her lashes at Kara, her smile small but growing, and turns her hand, lacing their fingers together.

“I’ll be there, if you want,” Kara says.

And there’s nothing small about Lena’s smile, now.

“Really?”

“If you want me there.”

Lena swallows, her fingers tightening in Kara’s. “I do.”

And Kara feels like her chest could burst with all the things she wants to say to Lena.

 

* * *

 

 

Lena never really liked dating. It was awkward and she always kind of faked her interest at first. Smiled and tried to hide the fact that she was uncomfortable as hell.

Not with Kara.

With Kara it’s fun. Warm. Easy. It’s like rediscovering a friend, someone she’s pulling back layers to and learning something deeper.

One night, on the balcony at L-Corp, headphones pulled out and tucked away, Kara leans on the railing and Lena rests next to her, their sides pressed close, their voices whispering into the dark.

It’s there that Kara tells Lena that she misses the constellations of Krypton. Her eyes wide and she stares up at the sky as if she can see them.

It’s the first time Lena hears the longing Kara has for something she’ll never see again.

It’s not the last.

After work at dinner, Kara tells her how she and Alex all but hated each other in the beginning. She tells it with fondness, with a laugh lilting her vowels and Lena rests her elbows on the table and asks for more information, more stories, watching Kara become more animate, her hands gesturing.

One night, Kara flies Lena to her roof and they lay on a blanket and stare at stars that are clear, for once. Kara’s words are hushed, a whisper in the air just for Lena’s ear, as she talks about her parents and Lena links their hands between them, her head on Kara’s shoulder, wishing she could absorb the pain in her voice. Kara tugs stories out of Lena, and Lena finds herself talking about Lex, about her father, about her mother. About the house that was too silent when Lex wasn’t there, then became that way even when he was.

At coffee, Lena finds out Kara snorts when she laughs _extremely_ hard, and that she knows the entire dance to Spice Girl’s _Spice Up Your Life_ and half does it in her seat while Lena claps a hand over her mouth and falls that little bit harder.

And then, finally, only weeks before the trial, Kara on Lena’s apartment balcony, Kara swallows and apologises, again.

Lena shakes her head and turns, finally, pushing up on her toes and cutting off Kara’s words with a kiss.

It’s simple. A pressing of lips. A huff of breath that spreads over her cheek at the surprise of it.

It’s nothing.

But it’s everything.

Lips curve under Lena’s and stamp a smile to her mouth.

Lena pulls back, fingers gentle against Kara’s shirt, and shakes her head. “No more apologising. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’ve talked about it.”

And Kara nods and Lena can’t wait anymore.

Her fingers tuck into Kara’s shirt to gently pull her into Lena’s front, and they’re kissing, achingly slow, lips and tongues that slide over each other and Kara’s hands in her hair, running over her back, fingers cradling her jaw.

It happens in snapshots.

Laughter as they stumble through the sliding door.

Shirts fluttering to the ground.

Kara getting stuck in her jeans and Lena simply pushing her on the bed and tugging them off, almost sprawling backwards when they get stuck on her foot.

A moan in her ear, nails that bite into her skin.

And Kara, her eyes on her, through everything.

Flushed skin and sweat down her spine, fingers messing her hair and teeth that graze the sensitive places of her. The curve where her neck meets her shoulder, her ribs, the back of her neck, her thighs, her hip bone, the bend of her knee.

And in all of it are whispered murmurs, and Kara, and the feeling of satisfaction, warm and rich and everything when Kara pulls her closer.

And when Lena wakes up in the morning, Kara is there, the sun spilling over Kara’s skin from the curtains Lena forgot to close and her smile sleepy and wide and everything.


	14. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no. It's over. I...well, I'm sad. 
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for your comments on this story. I hope you all understand just how much your comments feed writers and keeps us going. The motivation is so good and you've all been great.
> 
> And, mostly, thank you for reading this story. It delved into so much more than I meant it to. It became a bit of a character study, a chance to explore those sides of the characters the show was hiding from, to get into Lena and the things she's gone through, and to really explore one big thing: how the hell could Kara Zor-El love Mon-el?
> 
> This was my attempt at figuring that out.
> 
> And fixing it.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed. Thank you, again.

The weeks leading up to the trial crawl by and fly by all at the same time.

Kara wishes she could just skip the entire thing for Lena’s benefit, but that’s one of the few things she can’t do. So, instead, she sticks to distraction.

It’s not really so hard.

They have lunch, they get coffee, they go out for dinners that wrap them in candlelight and each other, and other times they get takeaway they eat on the couch in sweats and Kara learns Lena has _awful_ taste in movies.

They kiss on the balcony, in the shower, over the counter in the morning when Lena is still waking up, in need of coffee and cheeks still pink with sleep. Kara takes her snacks at work purely for the chance to kiss her against the desk.

They recreate that first time on the desk more times than they probably should, Lena adjusting her skirt after and kicking her out with a laugh when Kara’s made her late for a meeting, every time.

They sit on Lena’s sofa in her office and eat Chinese when Lena has to work late, and Kara drops by her apartment in full Supergirl outfit when some big bad has kept her busy all day and night and Lena drags her inside with sleep-messy hair and a grin, needy hands already tugging at her suit.

They find their own rhythm, their own beat—they settle into each other’s space so easily, like a book finding it’s way back into a bookshelf.

They stumble, of course. They miscommunicate. They both work too much, far more than either of them would wish, sometimes, but they both do it and understand the other’s need to and sometimes, in the future, all they'll manage is a coffee in the week but that’ll be enough, when they feel the way that they do.

A few nights before the trial they do a take two on a bar night, and this time Winn and James and J’onn join, as well as Maggie and Alex, and it bumps along at first, but they all find their feet. James and Lena still mostly glare at each other, but Alex and Lena sneak too much whiskey and they both actually _giggle_ which makes Kara laugh and Maggie raise her eyebrows and roll her eyes and eventually they head out, Lena loose limbed and warm from drinking just a touch too much and full of words that verge on _dirty_ —hell, not even verge, they just are—that she whispers in Kara’s ear in the Uber home.

A few hours later, the blankets and sheets in piles on the floor and Lena’s leg thrown over her hip, Lena’s lips kiss her neck almost languidly, and Kara tilts her head up and sighs into it, smiling.

“I like your friends,” Lena says, head back on Kara’s shoulder. “Especially your sister.”

The alcohol is well out of her voice by now and Kara runs her hand up Lena’s side, the other mussing her hair and Kara laughs. “I guessed that. And good, because it would be awkward if you didn’t. I’d have to trade you in.”

Lena squawks a protest and swats her hip and Kara laughs and then pauses, a siren ringing in her ear Lena has no chance to hear.

She's not ready to leave the bed, but the siren gets louder and another joins it.

Lena sits up and looks down at her, hair a nest and delightfully naked and cocks her head. “Supergirl needed?”

Kara sighs and slips out of bed, looking for her clothes. “I’m sorry.”

Lena’s already tugging the sheets onto the bed. “Don’t be—and Kara?”

Kara pauses at the bedroom door, clothes on and one foot through the doorway. “Yeah?” she asks, turning around.

The sheet may be tugged up now, but the image of Lena in only that and pink cheeked, clutching the sheet to her chest, does nothing to make Kara want to leave.

“Grab the spare key out of the drawer near the tv.”

Lena’s already flopped back down onto the bed, face buried in the pillow and ready to sleep. Slowly, the grin that crawls onto Kara’s lips takes over her entire face, and she grabs the key on the way out.

It’s easier to go when she knows she can just slip back in later, like she belongs here, in Lena’s home.

Not _like_ she does.

 _Because_ she does.

 

* * *

 

The trial drags for days.

Lena’s mother has the best team of lawyers money can buy, and they try to get her off, but the evidence is insurmountable.

The most damning of all of that is the testimony Lena gives.

The tabloids shout about it, even CatCo do a story on it, one Kara refuses to cover. The articles range from things like “Livid Luthor Cat Fight” and “Daughter Damns Luthor Mother to Life in Jail” to “The Luthor Legacy, Broken?” and it goes on and on.

All of them are right, in a way.

Well, there’s no cat fight.

But Lena does sit there and methodically answer the questions presented. Her mother’s previous leanings, her support of Lex. Lena’s kidnapping. The bomb, everything Lena heard. Word for word.

Then the defence starts up and tries to rip everything Lena said to pieces. To burn it to the ground, to make Lena look like an angry, jealous, brat of a child. They insinuate she’d been drinking since she was taken from a bar, that the drugs used to render Lena unconscious tampered with her ability to understand what transpired.

And all the while, Lillian doesn’t remove her gaze from Lena.

Her testimony takes two hours. An exhausting two hours. And the entire time, her mother stares at her, small, barely there smile present and shoulders back. She reacts to nothing. She blinks rarely.

And Lena, when she can, meets the look with one of her own she learned from Lillian herself.

And Kara sits in the back the entire time and never leaves.

She watches Lena with an entirely different look.

It’s mostly the only reason Lena makes it through.

In the end, Lillian Luthor is sentenced to life in jail.

Sitting at the back with Kara, their hands clasped, Lena lets out a long breath and pulls it back in, the air juddering as she does so. Families of the victims of the bombs, and survivors cheer and shout and Lillian is taken away, hands cuffed behind her. She looks back once, same stony look on her face, and somehow manages to find Lena in the back and catch her eye. The corner of her mouth quirks up, just, and then she’s gone.

There are protests outside the court house, pushback from extremists. Mostly, though, there’s celebration. A city come together to slam down their ugly side, the side that wishes to not welcome the different.

Lena is surrounded immediately, requests for comments thrown at her and she hunches her shoulders, Kara pressed close behind her, and Lena’s security detail usher them into a waiting car, something you could almost laugh at when you consider that Lena is with Supergirl.

Lena leans into the backseat and lets out a long breath, Kara’s hand sliding back into hers.

With her eyes closed, the petition between them and the driver sealed , Lena says, “They probably want a comment from Supergirl.”

And Kara settles into her side, head resting against Lena’s side and body warm. “I’m fine where I am.”

Lena swallows and wonders if she’ll ever get used to someone wanting to show up for her.

By the time they get back to Lena’s, on the other side of the city, it’s late afternoon, the sky beginning to change and traffic still thick. The apartment is cool and quiet and Lena pulls the balcony door open and sucks in lungfuls of air and before she can stop it, she’s crying, sobs catching in her throat and the tears hot on her cheeks.

And Kara’s arms are sliding around her, tugging her into her front. Lena buries her face into Kara’s neck, breathing hot wet air into her skin and clutching her back like Kara is going to try and disappear. Hands run up her back and into her hair, plucking out pins and elastic until it's falling down her back and Kara’s arm wraps around her waist and the other hand scratches gently at her scalp.

She doesn’t hush her. Or tell her it’ll be it’s okay. Or ask what’s wrong.

She just stands and holds her and lets Lena sob into her neck.

Lena doesn’t even really know why she’s crying, just that she needs to.

They stay there until it’s dark outside and Lena’s eyes hurt, red and puffy, and exhaustion washes over her. Kara drags her inside and sits her at a stool in the kitchen with a large glass of water and a bottle of wine nearby in case Lena wants it. She disappears and comes back with Lena’s favourite sloppy hoody, and Lena pulls it on over her court clothes and buries her hands in the ends of the sleeves and leans on the counter, watching Kara, now in soft sweats and hair in a scruffy bun, potter around the kitchen.

Her cheeks are a little rosy and she gives Lena soft smiles as she pulls out pasta and a pot to put on the stove and a jar of sauce.

And Lena, still snotty and cheeks tight and eyes raw, says, voice hoarse, “I love you.”

Kara freezes at the stove, blinking at her, and then she smiles, so bright and big that Lena can’t help but smile back. Kara drops pasta from the packet into now bubbling water and puts the packet down, walks over and leans over the counter, hands flat on the surface. She drops a kiss on Lena’s lips, one that tastes like her happiness, and pulls back, eyes such a bright blue that Lena wonders if she dragged some of the sky down with her when she fell to earth.

“I love you too.”

Then she goes back to making dinner, and Lena sips the water, warmth in her chest and unable to smother her smile.

There’s a ache after the day, buried deep somewhere, but it’s dull and easy to breathe through.

That feeling’s got nothing on the words Kara just said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, thanks for reading. And thanks to imakemixes for the mix she made for this fic and the songs that then made into the last few chapters.


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